chat_loopback

chat_loopback

Flagship cross-profile chat example (portable, metal).

What It Demonstrates

• One app scenario implemented across both supported compiler profiles.
• Typed runtime boundary (ChatRuntime) with local and network-backed flows.
• Interactive TUI UX plus deterministic headless CI test mode.
• In-frame diagnostics (diag stream) so transport/activity signals stay inside the TUI.
• Channel-scoped timeline rendering (#ops, #compiler, #shiproom, #nightwatch) so each room has its own feed.
• Presence-driven activity log (online / offline) shown in its own TUI frame.
• Momentum celebration effect: each room tracks momentum independently; hitting 100 triggers a temporary full-frame center-origin particle burst (colorized ASCII particles, emoji headline when enabled) and resets that room’s momentum so it can be earned again.
• Realtime history-sync behavior that imports new messages once (no repeated full-history spam lines).
• Presence heartbeats + timeout pruning so closed instances disappear from the operator list automatically.

Default Networking Behavior (Interactive Builds)

When you run the normal (non-.ci) build:

1. The app tries to connect to 127.0.0.1:7000.
2. If no room exists yet, it auto-starts a local host room and joins it.
3. Later instances on the same machine auto-join that same room.

This gives a shared multi-instance chat experience by default.

Note: this is a localhost room-host topology (one host + many clients), not full mesh peer-to-peer.

Quick Start (Two Instances, Same Room)

Terminal 1:

cd examples/chat_loopback
npx haxe compile.hxml
(cd out && cargo run -q)

Terminal 2:

cd examples/chat_loopback/out
cargo run -q

Each instance gets an auto-generated funny name. Presence updates are automatic; /history is still available for manual refresh.

Cargo Task Driver

Use the repo cargo alias with flags instead of adding many task HXML files:

cargo hx dev
cargo hx run --profile portable
cargo hx run --profile metal
cargo hx test --profile portable --ci
cargo hx build --profile metal --release

# or from repo root:
# cargo hx run --project examples/chat_loopback

This keeps profile selection in existing compile.<profile>.hxml files while build/run/test behavior is selected via cargo flags.

Key Bindings

• Tab cycles channels.
• Ctrl+H toggles the help modal.
• ? is regular text now (it does not open help by itself).
• Ctrl+C or q exits.

Explicit Modes

• --server [port]
  • Start a dedicated shared room host.
• --connect <host:port|port>
  • Connect as a client only.
  • Fails with an explicit error if the endpoint is unreachable.
• --local
  • Force fully local single-process runtime (no shared network room).

Server Diagnostics

Server connect/disconnect diagnostics are disabled by default so background socket logs do not corrupt the TUI frame.

• Enable them only when debugging transport behavior: -D chat_server_logs.

CI / Headless Note

compile.*.ci.hxml defines chat_tui_headless for deterministic CI behavior.

In headless mode, the app intentionally does not auto-host and exits quickly after a bounded tick window. Use non-.ci builds for real interactive multi-instance chat.