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# Urbit Pills
What are they huh
## Ivory
Ivory Pill Performance Comparison:
C Vere: 0.21 seconds (6.88 MB/s)
OCaml: 0.44 seconds (3.41 MB/s)
Ratio: ~2x slower
So for the 1.5MB ivory pill, we're only 2x slower - totally reasonable! This confirms the problem grows non-linearly with size/complexity.
What Does the Ivory Pill Do?
From the docs and C Vere source:
Ivory Pill = The %zuse core (Hoon standard library) compiled into a pill
Purpose
C Vere's I/O drivers (Ames, Behn, Clay, Dill, Eyre, Iris) need access to Hoon standard library functions like:
- Text parsing/formatting
- Data structure manipulation
- Cryptographic operations
- HTTP parsing
Rather than reimplement these in C, C Vere:
1. Loads the ivory pill at startup
2. Runs u3v_life() lifecycle on it
3. Keeps the %zuse core available
4. Calls Hoon functions from C when needed via u3v_wish()
What It Contains
- %zuse library: All Hoon stdlib (++ enjs, ++ dejs, ++ by, ++ so, etc.)
- NOT full Arvo: No vanes, no poke interface, no event processing
- Structure: ["ivory" core] - just the tagged core
How C Vere Uses It
// At startup (pkg/vere/king.c)
_king_boot_ivory(); // Load ivory pill
u3v_boot_lite(pil); // Run u3v_life() on it
u3A->roc = result; // Store %zuse core
// Later, when I/O driver needs a Hoon function:
u3v_wish("(rap 3 'hello' ' ' 'world')"); // Call into %zuse
Why It Exists
Without ivory, every Hoon stdlib function would need to be:
1. Reimplemented in C (huge effort)
2. Kept in sync with Hoon version (maintenance nightmare)
3. Tested separately (double the work)
Instead, ivory lets C Vere reuse the canonical Hoon stdlib by calling into it as needed.
Our OCaml Implementation
We successfully:
- ✅ Load ivory pill (0.44s)
- ✅ Validate "ivory" tag
- ✅ Implement u3v_life() lifecycle formula
- ❌ Lifecycle execution fails (still debugging)
For OCaml runtime, ivory would let us:
- Call Hoon formatters from OCaml I/O drivers
- Parse/serialize Hoon data structures
- Use crypto functions without reimplementing
Bottom line: Ivory is a clever way to avoid duplicating the Hoon stdlib in the runtime. It's fast to load (2x C is fine), but we need to debug why the lifecycle formula fails.
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