We are delighted to announce the release of GNU Mes 0.17, representing 64 commits over 6 weeks.

Mes is now an official GNU package and we have bootstrapped gcc-4.7.4 for x86-linux with a reduced binary seed (i.e., without regular toolchain).

Next targets:

• upstream the x86 Mes bootstrap to GuixSD
• create a x86_64 Mes C Lib, see if that is is enough to bootstrap x86_64
• reduce the 1MB ASCII M1 seed to ~5000 LOC/~100KB of M2 source
• create a plan for Geesh and Gash and use them to reduce the bootstrap binary dependencies
• and/or otherwise reduce the bootstrap binary dependencies

Packages are available from Guix's wip-bootstrap branch.

About

GNU Mes aims to help create full source bootstrapping for GNU/Linux distributions such as GuixSD as part of the bootstrappable builds 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 to be transpiled by M2-Planet.

The Scheme interpreter (mes.c) has a Garbage Collector, a library of loadable Scheme modules-- notably Dominique Boucher's LALR, Pre-R6RS portable syntax-case with R7RS ellipsis, Matt Wette's Nyacc --and test suite just barely enough to support a simple REPL and simple C-compiler: MesCC.

Mes+MesCC can compile an only lightly patched bootstrappable TinyCC 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-4.7.4.

Mes is inspired by The Maxwell Equations of Software: LISP-1.5 -- John McCarthy page 13, GNU Guix's source/binary packaging transparency and Jeremiah Orians's stage0 ~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-0.17.tar.gz
https://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/mes/mes-0.17.tar.gz.sig

Use a mirror for higher download bandwidth:

https://www.gnu.org/order/ftp.html

Here are the MD5 and SHA1 checksums:

93ca82612e203fd667dfbdfb83c06549  mes-0.17.tar.gz
d38ec93ab6dc2c92a5c5e96fef7f9295972772c2  mes-0.17.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-0.17.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[SD] from a git checkout by running

guix package -f .guix.scm

Get informed, get involved

Join #bootstrappable on irc.freenode.net.

Changes in 0.17 since 0.16.1

• Core

  • GNU Mes is now an official GNU package.
  • MesCC is now installed as a regular Guile package.
  • Support --srcdir build.
  • Support all standard GNU make targets.

• MesCC

  • Mes C Lib now bootstraps glibc-2.2.5, binutils-2.20.1, gcc-4.7.4.

Changes in 0.16.1 since 0.16

• Core

  • Mes now builds out of the box on Debian buster/testing.
  • Mes now comes with a generic build recipe: build-aux/setup-mes.sh.
  • Mes now comes with INFO documentation.

• MesCC

  • MesCC now exits if spawning BLOOD_ELF, M1, or HEX2 fails.

Greetings,
janneke

1. GNU Mes
2. GuixSD
3. bootstrappable builds
4. being simplified
5. M2-Planet
6. LALR
7. portable syntax-case
8. Nyacc
9. bootstrappable TinyCC
10. LISP-1.5
11. stage0