GNU Mes 0.27.1 released

August 19, 2025

Mes 0.27.1 is a bug-fix release. It represents 53 commits by four people over one year. This release resurrects supports development builds with gcc-14 and adds support for using NYACC versions 0.99.0 through 2.02.2.

Enjoy!

ABOUT

GNU Mes is a Scheme interpreter and C compiler for bootstrapping the GNU System. It has helped to decimate the number and size of binary seeds that were used in the bootstrap of GNU Guix 1.0. Recently, version 0.24.2 has realized the first Full Source Bootstrap for Guix. The final goal is to help create a full source bootstrap as part of the bootstrappable builds effort for any UNIX-like operating system.

The Scheme interpreter is written in ~5,000 LOC of simple C, and the C compiler written in Scheme and these are mutual self-hosting. Mes can now be bootstrapped from M2-Planet and Mescc-Tools.

Mes + MesCC + Mes C Library can build a bootstrappable TinyCC that is self-hosting. Using this bootstrappable-tcc and the Mes C library we can build an ancient version of the GNU tools triplet: glibc-2.2.5, binutils-2.20.1, gcc-2.95.3. This is enough to bootstrap Guix for i686-linux, x86_64-linux, armhf-linux and aarch64-linux.

Mes was inspired by The Maxwell Equations of Software: LISP-1.5 -- John McCarthy page 13, Guix's source/binary packaging transparency and Jeremiah Orians's stage0, a ~500-byte self-hosting hex assembler.

DOWNLOAD

git clone git://git.savannah.gnu.org/mes.git

Here is the GNU Mes home page:
gnu.org/s/mes/

For a summary of changes and contributors, see:
git.sv.gnu.org/gitweb/?p=mes.git;a=shortlog;h=v0.27.1 or run this command from a git-cloned mes directory:

git shortlog v0.27..v0.27.1

Here are the compressed sources and a GPG detached signature:

mes-0.27.1.tar.gz
mes-0.27.1.tar.gz.sig

Use a mirror for higher download bandwidth:

mes-0.27.1.tar.gz
mes-0.27.1.tar.gz.sig

Here are the SHA1 and SHA256 checksums:

d1bb88ae1c83269599ddfc975f5d3268fb7f5596  mes-0.27.1.tar.gz
183a40ea47ea49f8a1e3bd1b9d12e676374d64d63bc79e7bc1ae7d673dfdf25d  mes-0.27.1.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-0.27.1.tar.gz.sig

The signature should match the fingerprint of the following key:

pub   rsa4096 2018-04-08 [SC]  
      1A85 8392 E331 EAFD B8C2  7FFB F3C1 A0D9 C1D6 5273  
uid   Jan (janneke) Nieuwenhuizen <janneke@gnu.org>

If that command fails because you don't have the required public key, or that public key has expired, try the following commands to retrieve or refresh it, and then rerun the 'gpg --verify' command.

gpg --recv-keys 1A858392E331EAFDB8C27FFBF3C1A0D9C1D65273

As a last resort to find the key, you can try the official GNU keyring:

wget -q https://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/gnu-keyring.gpg  
gpg --keyring gnu-keyring.gpg --verify mes-0.27.1.tar.gz.sig

Alternatively, Mes can be installed using GNU Guix:

guix pull  
guix install mes

NEWS

Changes in 0.27.1 since 0.27

See also bootstrappable.org.
Join bug-mes@gnu.org and #bootstrappable on irc.libera.chat for discussions.

Thanks to everyone who contributed to this release:

 2  Andrius Štikonas  
15  Ekaitz Zarraga  
35  Janneke Nieuwenhuizen  
 1  Samuel Lidén Borell

Janneke -- on behalf of the Mes developers