We are pleased to announce the release of GNU Mes 0.19, representing
100 commits over 10 weeks.
Mes has now brought the Reduced Binary Seed bootstrap to Guix (bootstrap
a GNU/Linux system without binary GNU toolchain or equivalent) and work
is ongoing to audit and verify this bootstrap path in NixOS.
This release introduces strings as byte-array, hash-tables and native
structs. While that does increase the footprint somewhat, it fixes
our performance issue; tinycc is now compiled in ~8min (WAS: ~1h30).
Next targets:
- translate mes.c into unsnarfed mes.M2
- use Gash to remove bash, coreutils&co, grep, sed, tar from the Guix
bootstrap binaries
- replace the NixOS bootstrap
- use dietlibc, uClibc, ... for bootstrapping GNU (bash, binutils,
gcc, tar) and remove Mes C lib+gnu?
- bootstrap gcc-3.x or 4.x directly, drop initial gcc-2.95.3 target?
- have M1+hex2 create gcc/tcc-usable object files? archives?
- Debian?
- ARM, the Hurd?
Packages are available from Guix's core-updates branch.
* About
GNU Mes[0] brings a Reduced Binary Seed bootstrap[1] to Guix[2] and
potentially to any other interested GNU/Linux distribution, and aims
to help create a full source bootstrap as part of the
bootstrappable builds[3] effort.
It consists of a mutual self-hosting Scheme interpreter written in
~5,000 LOC of simple C and a Nyacc-based C compiler written in Scheme.
This mes.c is being simplified[4] to be transpiled by M2-Planet[5].
The Scheme interpreter (mes.c) has a Garbage Collector, a library of
loadable Scheme modules-- notably Dominique Boucher's LALR[6], Pre-R6RS
[portable syntax-case[7] with R7RS ellipsis, Matt Wette's Nyacc[8] --and test
suite just barely enough to support a simple REPL and simple
C-compiler: MesCC.
Mes+MesCC can compile an only lightly patched TinyCC[9] that is
self-hosting. Using this tcc and the Mes C library we now have a
Reduced Binary Seed bootstrap for the gnutools triplet: glibc-2.2.5,
binutils-2.20.1, gcc-2.95.3. This is enough to bootstrap Guix for
i686-linux and x86_64-linux.
Mes is inspired by The Maxwell Equations of Software: LISP-1.5[10] -- John
McCarthy page 13, GNU Guix's source/binary packaging transparency and
Jeremiah Orians's stage0[11] ~500 byte self-hosting hex assembler.
* Download
git clone git://git.savannah.gnu.org/mes.git
Here are the compressed sources and a GPG detached signature[*]:
https://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/mes/mes-0.19.tar.gz
https://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/mes/mes-0.19.tar.gz.sig
Use a mirror for higher download bandwidth:
https://ftpmirror.gnu.org/mes/mes-0.19.tar.gz
https://ftpmirror.gnu.org/mes/mes-0.19.tar.gz.sig
Here are the MD5 and SHA1 checksums:
99e134df87adc5fc5fd2c04941929c23 mes-0.19.tar.gz
c9781b3b6a814acc985c2ac68caa111a56583bca mes-0.19.tar.gz
[*] Use a .sig file to verify that the corresponding file (without the
.sig suffix) is intact. First, be sure to download both the .sig file
and the corresponding tarball. Then, run a command like this:
gpg --verify mes-0.19.tar.gz.sig
If that command fails because you don't have the required public key,
then run this command to import it:
gpg --keyserver keys.gnupg.net --recv-keys
1A858392E331EAFDB8C27FFBF3C1A0D9C1D65273
and rerun the 'gpg --verify' command.
Mes runs from the source tree and can also be built, packaged and
installed in Guix from a git checkout by running
guix package -f .guix.scm
* Get informed, get involved
See https://bootstrappable.org
Join #bootstrappable on irc.freenode.net.
* Changes in 0.19 since 0.18
** Core
*** The build system has been simplified.
*** Mes now prints a backtrace upon error.
*** Performance has been improved 2-8 times, making Mes 2-10 times slower than
Guile.
*** Mes now supports a module type and uses a `boot-module'.
*** Mes now supports a hash_table type.
*** Mes now supports a struct type.
*** Mes now supports building a %bootstrap-mes seed from Guix.
** Language
*** Records are now implemented using struct (WAS: vector).
*** 44 new functions
ceil, char-downcase, char-set-adjoin, char-set-complement,
char-upcase, current-time, delete-file, dup, dup2, file-exists?,
floor, frame-printer, get-internal-run-time, getcwd, gettimeofday,
hash, hash-ref, hash-set!, hash-table-printer, hashq,
hashq-get-handle, hashq-ref, hashq-set, inexact->exact,
make-hash-table, make-stack, make-struct, module-define!,
module-printer, module-ref, module-variable, read-line, round,
stack-length, stack-ref, string-downcase, string-tokenize,
string-upcase, struct-length, struct-ref, struct-set! struct-vtable,
struct-vtable, with-error-to-file.
** MesCC
*** Assembly defines have been cleaned-up: duplicates deleted, missing added,
wrong fixed.
*** MesCC now supports compiling GNU Bash and GNU Tar.
6 New functions
getegid, geteuid, getppid, setgid, setuid, sigdelset, sigprocmask.
22 New macros
EACCES, ENOSPC, ESPIPE, INT16
