[rb-general] GNU Mes 0.17 released [alpha]

[Jan Nieuwenhuizen]

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[0] aims to help create full source bootstrapping for GNU/Linux
distributions such as GuixSD[1] as part of the bootstrappable builds[2]
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[3] to be transpiled by M2-Planet[4].

The Scheme interpreter (mes.c) has a Garbage Collector, a library of
loadable Scheme modules-- notably Dominique Boucher's LALR[5],
Pre-R6RS portable syntax-case[6] with R7RS ellipsis, Matt Wette's
Nyacc[7] --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[8] 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[9] --
John McCarthy page 13, GNU Guix's source/binary packaging transparency
and Jeremiah Orians's stage0[10] ~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://alpha.gnu.org/gnu/mes/mes-0.17.tar.gz
    https://alpha.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

[0] https://www.gnu.org/software/mes
[1] https://www.gnu.org/software/guix
[2] http://bootstrappable.org
[3] https://github.com/oriansj/mes-m2
[4] https://github.com/oriansj/m2-planet
[5] https://github.com/schemeway/lalr-scm
[6] https://www.cs.indiana.edu/chezscheme/syntax-case/old-psyntax.html
[7] https://www.nongnu.org/nyacc
[8] https://gitlab.com/janneke/tinycc
[9] http://www.softwarepreservation.org/projects/LISP/book/LISP%201.5%20Programmers%20Manual.pdf
[10] https://github.com/oriansj/stage0
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