Mes 0.8 released

[Jan Nieuwenhuizen <janneke@gnu.org>]

I am pleased to announce the release of Mes 0.8, representing 34
commits over 3 weeks.  Mescc now produces object files in the hex2
ascii output format compatible with the stage0 linker.

Special thanks to Jeremiah Orians for support with MESCC_Tools and
hex2, more goodness to follow soon!

* About

    Mes aims to create full source bootstrapping for GuixSD: an
    entirely source-based bootstrap path.  The target is to [have
    GuixSD] boostrap from a minimal, easily inspectable binary --that
    should be readable as source-- into something close to R6RS
    Scheme.

    It currently consists of a mutual self-hosting [close to Guile-]
    Scheme interpreter prototype in C and a Nyacc-based C compiler in
    [Guile] Scheme.

    The Scheme interpreter prototype (mes.c) has a Garbage Collector,
    a library of loadable Scheme modules-- notably Dominique Boucher's
    LALR[1], Pre-R6RS portable syntax-case[2] with R7RS ellipsis, Matt
    Wette's Nyacc[3] Guile's PEG[4] --and test suite just barely
    enough to support a simple REPL (repl.mes) and simple C-compiler
    (mescc.mes) that can produce the second initial ELF binary from
    binary from mes.c, in only about 2h30'.

    Mes was inspired by The Maxwell Equations of Software: LISP-1.5[5]
    -- John McCarthy page 13, GNU Guix's[6] source/binary packaging
    transparency and Jeremiah Orians's stage0[7] bootstrap project.

* Download

    git clone https://gitlab.com/janneke/mes

    wget https://gitlab.com/janneke/mes/repository/archive.tar.gz?ref=v0.8 -O mes-0.8.tar.gz

Mes runs from the source tree and can also be built, packaged and
installed in Guix[SD] by the usual

    guix package -f guix.scm

* Changes in 0.8 since 0.7
 ** Mescc
 *** Mescc now depends on the hex2 linker from MESCC_Tools[9].
 Direct ELF output support has been removed.
 ELF symbol and string table creation has been removed.
 *** Mescc now has experimental annotation support for hex2.
 *** Mescc has experimental annotation support for hex2.
 *** Mescc has been simplified by leveraging use labels in hex2 output.
 *** Mescc now supports continue in loops.
 *** Mescc now compiles to hex2 object files.
 ** Language
 *** 1 new function
 list-index.

Greetings,
janneke

[1] https://github.com/schemeway/lalr-scm
[2] https://www.cs.indiana.edu/chezscheme/syntax-case/old-psyntax.html
[3] https://www.nongnu.org/nyacc/
[4] https://www.gnu.org/software/guile/docs/master/guile.html/PEG-Parsing.html
[5] http://www.softwarepreservation.org/projects/LISP/book/LISP%25201.5%2520Programmers%2520Manual.pdf
[6] https://www.gnu.org/software/guix/
[7] https://github.com/oriansj/stage0
[8] https://gitlab.com/janneke/tinycc
[9] https://github.com/oriansj/MESCC_Tools

-- 
Jan Nieuwenhuizen <janneke@gnu.org> | GNU LilyPond http://lilypond.org
Freelance IT http://JoyofSource.com | Avatar® http://AvatarAcademy.com