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Track guessed as P from the test source. The ranker reads frontmatter, so this line — not the body — decides who works it; correct it if the guess is wrong.

origin/master has advanced 14 commit(s) since this sha. Re-verify at current HEAD before acting — the callback is tagged to the sha that was tested, which may no longer be the state of the tree.

regression: test-core#src:test/test_mgmt_operators.pas red at 47277dd0e52b (auto-filed by twatch)

Repro

tools/testmgr.py --tier native --job 'test-core#src:test/test_mgmt_operators.pas' at 47277dd0e52b8594fdad3fb15eb2be2d2a518f41

Range

The named sha 47277dd0e52b CANNOT be the cause — it touches no buildable file (docs / tickets / tstate only). It is the sha that was TESTED, i.e. the upper bound of an untested range; the cause is somewhere below it.

bad 47277dd0e52b, last good 0c8459022373, 5 commit(s) in range — the watcher narrows this by idle bisect; check tstate/TSTATE.md for the current range.

Log tail

ok: /tmp/testmgr-scratch-1238665/test_mgmt_operators26  [code=297424B  data=24744B  bss=75692B  procs=730]
FAIL: an array of a managed record compiled

Stub ticket: signal only. Track T agent (face 2) enriches or a dev track takes it from the repro line.

Coordinator measurement, 2026-08-29 (frank-coordinator) — does NOT reproduce here

The range contains exactly ONE buildable commit. 0c8459022373..47277dd0e52b is five commits; four are docs/tickets/tstate/roster. The only code-bearing one is 4a3c88532 — "AllocArray/AllocDynArray must clear RecName on a recycled slot". Given the failure text is "an array of a managed record compiled", that is a mechanistic adjacency and not a timing coincidence, which is why it was worth stopping a pin over.

It does not reproduce on this host at HEAD. With the binary pinned as v393 (1d69760deabe, includes 4a3c88532), test/test_mgmt_operators.pas compiles clean, runs, and its output matches test_mgmt_operators.expected byte for byte. .expected contains no FAIL line, so a pass here is a real pass and not an expectation that absorbed the failure.

Deliberately NOT closed, and the reason matters. Now-green proves as little as still-red until you know what changed. Three things could each explain this and they need different responses:

  1. Fixed by a later commit. HEAD is past the tested sha and includes 8b35e88fa (for-loop bounds) and 29e8ee52a. If one of those closed it, the ticket is done and should say which.
  2. Host-specific to plexus. This is the pattern plexus.json has produced before — a green here bounded by the machine that ran it, and nothing states those bounds. Note the host that filed it is not the host that cleared it.
  3. Non-deterministic. A managed-record array touches allocation order; a red that appears once and clears is exactly what a slot-recycling defect looks like, and 4a3c88532 is a slot-recycling fix.

What actually settles it: the watcher re-running this job on plexus at a sha at or past v393. Until then this is one host's pass against another host's fail, which is not a verdict. Do not close it on the strength of this section.

Note on the track: P — auto-guessed from the .pas test source. The candidate cause is symtab.inc, which is Track A. Re-lane before working it if the cause is confirmed.

It DOES reproduce, at HEAD, on this host — 2026-08-30 (pxx-a5)

Fixed in compiler/pasparser_proc.inc; self-host fixedpoint 657e79e36d75, gate.sh quick GREEN.

Why the section above says otherwise: it measured the arm that passes

test-core#src:test/test_mgmt_operators.pas is not one assertion. The Makefile target compiles test_mgmt_operators.pas and diffs it against .expected — and then runs three NEGATIVE rows, each of which compiles a program that must be REFUSED and fails if the compile succeeds:

if ./$(COMPILER) test/test_mgmt_operators_array_refused.pas ...; then \
  echo "FAIL: an array of a managed record compiled"; exit 1; \
fi

The watcher's log tail is that exact string. The coordinator measurement checked that test_mgmt_operators.pas "compiles clean, runs, and its output matches .expected byte for byte" — true, still true, and about a different assertion than the one that failed. .expected could not have absorbed this failure because the failure is not in that program at all.

At HEAD (8cb0ce6ce208), measured before anything was changed:

row result
test_mgmt_operators.pas vs .expected PASS
test_mgmt_operators_array_refused.pas COMPILED — must be refused
test_mgmt_operators_field_refused.pas refused (ok)
test_mgmt_operators_copy_refused.pas refused (ok)

So it is not host-specific, not non-deterministic, and not fixed by a later commit. It is one row of four, and the three hypotheses in the section above were all answering a question that did not need asking yet.

The cause, and 4a3c88532 did not introduce it

WrapManagementOpsRange guards its refusal on SymTR[i].RecId <> REC_NONE, and SymSyncTypeRef sets SymTR[idx].RecId := Syms[idx].RecName. RecName is meaningless for an array symbol — only AllocVar/AllocParam ever write it; an array's record id is ElemRecName. The refusal was reading a field that was never about the element type, and it fired anyway because symbol slots are RECYCLED and the stale value happened to be the right record.

4a3c88532 cleared RecName on recycle, so the field became REC_NONE, the whole if was skipped, and an array of a managed record began compiling with an Initialize that never runs. That commit removed the accident this was standing on — and named this class in its own message:

The audit found 20 more RecName reads guarded only by TypeKind = tyRecord, which is not a guard at all for an array symbol — that is a separate ticket, not this fix.

This is one of the twenty, reached from the other side: not a read that returns the wrong record, a read that returned the right one by luck.

Measured, not inferred. Rebuilt the compiler with that single line reverted: the refusal fires again. Restored, applied the real fix, and it fires for the right reason.

Fix

A new SymManagedRecId(idx) returns SymTR[idx].ElemRec for an array symbol and SymTR[idx].RecId otherwise, and both refusals read it. Ordinary arrays of ordinary records are unaffected — the guard still requires an actual Initialize/Finalize overload on the element record.

The test could not tell a correct guard from a lucky one

That is the part worth keeping. test_mgmt_operators_array_refused asserts "this is refused" and nothing more, so it passed for years on an accident and went silent the moment the accident was cleaned up. A second arm now exists: test/test_mgmt_operators_global_array_refused.pas, the same shape as a GLOBAL, which WrapMainBodyManagementOps reaches through a separate call.

Both arms were measured against a rebuild with the clear reverted — refused there too, i.e. the stale value covered globals as well, so the second arm is breadth across two code paths rather than a witness the first one lacked. Said plainly because the reverse would have been a better story and is not what the measurement showed.

New Makefile rows checked for liveness: the refusal row pointed at a program that does compile reports its FAIL, and the diagnostic-text row goes red against a wrong ticket name.

Verification

Lane

Kept Track P: the trigger was symtab.inc (A) but the defect and the fix are in the Pascal management-operator desugar, pasparser_proc.inc. No edit to symtab.inc, pasparser_decl.inc, pasparser_generic.inc, or ir.inc.

Still open, and it is the bigger half

The other ~19 RecName reads guarded by TypeKind = tyRecord are untouched. TypeKind holds the ELEMENT kind for an array, so every one of them is a read of a field that means nothing for the symbol it is reading — some will return REC_NONE and skip work that should happen (this one), others will act on a recycled id. That audit is [[audit-a-typekind-tyrecord-is-not-a-guard-against-an-array-symbol]]; this regression is the first of them to surface on its own, and it did so as a silently-missing diagnostic rather than as a wrong answer.