Re: GNU Mes 0.21 released

[Jan Nieuwenhuizen]

Arne Babenhauserheide writes:

>> 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.
>
> That’s two small paragraphs of humble text with a bang that’s hard to
> overstate. Thank you very much!

Yes, I guess you are right.  One reason to stay humble here is that much
works still needs to be done; the actual merge of the Scheme-only
bootstrap only just started and can be followed here

    https://debbugs.gnu.org/cgi/bugreport.cgi?bug=38390

When this gets merged we will do our best to make the announcement more
bold, reflecting the hard work by the bootstrappable team!

>> We are excited that the Nlnet Foundation[12] is now sponsoring this
>> work!
>
> I’m very, very happy that this worked out!

Phew, me too!

>>  - the Hurd
>
> What’s needed for the Hurd in addition to Linux?

The kernel interface part of the C library.  Mes (the scheme
interpreter) comes with MesCC (a C99 compiler for a Guile-compatible
Scheme) which comes with a simple C Library.

This Mes C Library comes in several flavours: libc-mini (write and
exit), libc (for mes), libc+tcc (for tcc) and libc+gnu (for the
bootstrap).  Currently, Mes runs on the Hurd but many kernel calls are
missing.  To start a bootstrap on the Hurd we most need fork and exec.
Things like `stat' are worked around with `open', many other kernel
calls are stubbed.

Once MesCC runs on the Hurd, the fun starts with the Guix bootstrap;
will tcc build on the Hurd, gcc-2.95.3, etc?

Greetings,
janneke

-- 
Jan Nieuwenhuizen <address@hidden> | GNU LilyPond http://lilypond.org
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