The C heap through an import of stdlib.h, and no alloc or free builtins
std reaches malloc and free by importing stdlib.h like any C library, and the
language’s alloc and free builtins are gone; chosen by the user on 2026-10-22.
r11 had made alloc(size, align) and free(p) builtins “until the stdlib’s allocators
replace them”. The allocators came in M12 but the builtins stayed, and any program could
call them: the ownership example, two run tests and §8.3’s Buffer all did. The user asked
for them to go, and for the allocator to call the real C functions rather than a Dazzle
primitive.
- The C heap is an import, not an
extern fn. The user rejected a hand-writtenextern fn malloc(…): nothing checks that such a declaration matches a function that exists on the target, nor says which header declares it. A header import has both answers from the header itself, and the generated C++ includes it. stdcarries its own recipe:[cpp.libs.libc]withimport = ["stdlib.h"], as the dependency keylibc. It isstd’s, so a program cannot name it; a program that wantsmallocimportsstdlib.hitself.- A requested system header imports its declarations (§15.1). Before, the importer
passed over every declaration in a system header, so
import = ["stdlib.h"]produced nothing. Now a system header named inimportbrings its own declarations and those of the system headers it includes; one reached only through a library’s header still does not, so importing raylib does not import the C library. - Every build reads
stdlib.hthrough libclang, about 50–80 ms, once per process for every project (its cache key does not depend on the project). libclang becomes required for every program rather than only those importing C or C++; the installer bundles it (T-0076) and CI already had it. A cache on disk (T-0014) would remove the cost. extern fnstays for now, for the rest of whatstddoes natively — files, clocks, the console, float formatting. Removing it is T-0084, which needs variadic C functions (T-0008),wchar_t(T-0015) and the on-disk import cache (T-0014) first.