vide/docs/tut/crash-course/6-root.md

Root Reactive Scopes

Any reactive scopes created, such as by effect(), must be done so within a "root" reactive scope. This is the main purpose of mount(), which you use once at the top level to create your app as shown in the first introduction.

This is so that when the app is unmounted, it can clean up any reactive scopes created within it, since reactive scopes track any reactive scopes created within them.

local source = vide.source
local effect = vide.effect

local function App()
    local count = source(0)

    effect(function()
        print(count())
    end)
end

vide.mount(App) -- works!

App() -- will error since effect() was not called within a reactive scope

Mounting returns a function that when called will destroy any reactive scopes created during the mount() call.

local unmount = mount(App)

unmount()

Vide's reactivity can be represented graphically, as a reactive graph.

The reactive graph for the above example looks like so:

%%{init: {
    "theme": "base",
    "themeVariables": {
        "primaryColor": "#1B1B1F",
        "primaryTextColor": "#fff",
        "primaryBorderColor": "#1B1B1F",
        "lineColor": "#79B8FF",
        "tertiaryColor": "#161618",
        "tertiaryBorderColor": "#161618"
    }
}}%%

graph

subgraph root["mount"]
    direction LR
    count --> effect
end

When the mount scope is destroyed, the effect scope will also be destroyed since it was created within it.

You don't need to worry about ensuring all your effects are created within a root scope, since you should be creating all your UI and corresponding effects within a top-level mount() call that puts all your UI together. So it is safe to assume that any effect you create will be created under this top level scope.