Re: GNU Mes 0.21 released

[Brett Gilio <brettg@posteo.net>]

Jan Nieuwenhuizen <janneke@gnu.org> writes:

> We are pleased to announce the release of GNU Mes 0.21, representing
> 54 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).  See
> https://guix.gnu.org/blog/2019/guix-reduces-bootstrap-seed-by-50/
>
> This release supports a Scheme-only bootstrap: Mes can now be built with
> Gash and the experimental Gash Core Utils instead of using GNU Awk, GNU
> Bash, the GNU Core Utilities, GNU Grep, GNU Gzip, GNU Make, GNU SED, and
> GNU Tar.  Also, the Mes C Library now supports bootstrapping those.
> Finally, this release brings Mes as a package to Debian GNU/Linux.
>
> We are excited that the Nlnet Foundation[12] is now sponsoring this
> work!
>
> Next targets:
>
>  - Introduce the Reduced Binaries Seed bootstrap to NixOS (Debian,
>    Gentoo, ...?)
>  - Scheme-only bootstrap: use Guile, Gash and Gash Core Utils to remove
>    awk, bash, core utilities, grep, gzip, make, sed, tar, etc. from the
>    Guix bootstrap binaries
>  - ARM support
>  - Full Source Bootstrap: compile Mes.c using M2-Planet
>  - Reduced Binary Seed bootstrap for ARM
>  - the Hurd
>
> Packages are available in Guix master.
>
> * About
>
>   GNU Mes[0] brings a Reduced Binary Seed bootstrap[1] to GNU Guix[2].
>   This bootstrap has halved the size of opaque, uninspectable binaries
>   that were needed to bootstrap Guix.  The final goal is to help create
>   a full source bootstrap as part of the bootstrappable builds[3] effort
>   for any interested UNIX-like operating system.
>
>   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 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 enough to support a REPL and a C99 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-0.21.tar.gz
>     https://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/mes/mes-0.21.tar.gz.sig
>
>   Use a mirror for higher download bandwidth:
>     https://ftpmirror.gnu.org/mes/mes-0.21.tar.gz
>     https://ftpmirror.gnu.org/mes/mes-0.21.tar.gz.sig
>
>   Here are the MD5 and SHA1 checksums:
>
>   dea43529d2d84fb4b9d81bdd9efcc715  mes-0.21.tar.gz
>   35721a81feeab6e0d5913b8bf78f18951edbb964  mes-0.21.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-0.21.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.
>
> * Get informed, get involved
>
>   See https://bootstrappable.org
>   Join #bootstrappable on irc.freenode.net.
>
> * Changes in 0.21 since 0.20
>  ** Core
>  *** Mes can now be bootstrapped with Gash and Gash Core Utils.
>  *** Mes now supports a Scheme-only bootstrap.
>  *** Mes now supports -c EXPR.
>  ** MesCC
>  *** Mes C Library now supports bootstrapping GNU Awk, GNU Bash, GNU SED, and GNU Tar.
>  *** Mes C Library now has limited float support in vfprintf, vsnprintf, vsscanf.
>  **** 7 new functions
>  abtod, atof, creat, dtoab, execlp, isgraph, mknod, readlink, strtod,
>  symlink.
>  **** 5 new stubs
>  getgrgid, getgrnam, getpgid, getpgrp, mktime, setgrent.
>  ** Noteworthy bug fixes
>  *** A bug with `mes -c EXPR' has been fixed.
>  *** The REPL now works again on x86_64.
>  *** --with-system-libc now works again.
>
> Greetings,
> janneke and Danny.
>
> [0] https://www.gnu.org/software/mes
> [1] https://guix.gnu.org/blog/2019/guix-reduces-bootstrap-seed-by-50/
> [2] https://www.gnu.org/software/guix
> [3] https://bootstrappable.org
> [4] https://github.com/oriansj/mes-m2
> [5] https://github.com/oriansj/m2-planet
> [6] https://github.com/schemeway/lalr-scm
> [7] https://www.cs.indiana.edu/chezscheme/syntax-case/old-psyntax.html
> [8] https://www.nongnu.org/nyacc
> [9] https://gitlab.com/janneke/tinycc
> [10] http://www.softwarepreservation.org/projects/LISP/book/LISP%201.5%20Programmers%20Manual.pdf
> [11] https://savannah.nongnu.org/projects/stage0
> [12] https://nlnet.nl/project/GNUMes

Fantastic work to everybody involved!

Brett Gilio