We are happy to announce the release of GNU Mes 0.26.1.

This release represents 57 commits by five people in 26 weeks. It brings full Gash support and many fixes for the riscv64-linux bootstrap. See the NEWS below for a brief summary.

We are excited that the NLnet Foundation is sponsoring this work!

What's next?

Support newer versions of Nyacc. Resurrect support for the Hurd. Remove indirect Guile dependencies (via Gash and Gash-Utils) from the Mes bootstrap in Guix. Support for bootstrapping gcc-4.6.4 without depending on gcc-2.95.3, and a Full Source Bootstrap for armhf-linux, and riscv64-linux. Bringing the Full Source Bootstrap to NixOS.

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: https://gnu.org/s/mes/

For a summary of changes and contributors, see: https://git.sv.gnu.org/gitweb/?p=mes.git;a=shortlog;h=v0.26.1

or run this command from a git-cloned mes directory:

git shortlog v0.26..v0.26.1

Here are the compressed sources and a GPG detached signature:

https://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/mes/mes-0.26.1.tar.gz  
https://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/mes/mes-0.26.1.tar.gz.sig

Use a mirror for higher download bandwidth:

https://ftpmirror.gnu.org/mes/mes-0.26.1.tar.gz
https://ftpmirror.gnu.org/mes/mes-0.26.1.tar.gz.sig

Here are the SHA1 and SHA256 checksums:

f228703f3e6c1104d825ade5183b74ef47d6cde4  mes-0.26.1.tar.gz  
e1370d528cbfcbb477ca35e59ae2f6fb71f611f9c856330e6dcb5f2459c2fcf4  mes-0.26.1.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-0.26.1.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-0.26.1.tar.gz.sig

Alternatively, Mes can be installed using GNU Guix:

guix pull  
guix install mes

NEWS

Changes in 0.26.1 since 0.26

• Mes

  • Running Gash is now fully supported.
  • The REPL's ,use command now loads Guile-style modures.

• MesCC

  • The comma operator is now better supported.

  • New type: ucontext_t.

    • 1 new function pathconf.
    • 2 new stubs putenv, realpath.

• Noteworthy bug fixes

  • A workaround was added to run Gash-Utils in the kaem bootstrap.

  • A Guile-style module bug was fixed where MesCC would run twice.

  • ./configure.sh can be run without using --host during bootstrap.

  • srfi-43 vector-fold has been resurrected.

  • The armhf build has been resurrected.

  • On x86_64-linux, getdents64 is being used instead of getdents.

  • MesCC now produces position-independent binaries for x86_64.

  • Several RISCV-64 MesCC (signed) integer problems were fixed.

  • Setjmp/longjmp for RISCV-64 on TinyCC has been fixed.

  • CHAR_MAX is now depends on the signedness of char.

  • intmax_t and uintmax_t were fixed for 64bit archtectures.

  • A buffer-overflow for very large integers in ntoab was fixed.

Thanks to everyone who contributed to this release:

Andrius Štikonas (7)  
Ekaitz Zarraga (15)  
Janneke Nieuwenhuizen (29)  
Michael Forney (4)  
Timothy Sample (2)

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

Janneke
[on behalf of the mes maintainers]