2 #+TITLE: Hacking GNU Mes
4 Copyright © 2016, 2017,2018 Jan (janneke) Nieuwenhuizen <janneke@gnu.org>
6 Copying and distribution of this file, with or without modification,
7 are permitted in any medium without royalty provided the copyright
8 notice and this notice are preserved.
11 guix environment -l .guix.scm #64 bit + 32bit
15 guix environment --system=i686-linux -l .guix.scm #32 bit only
19 guix package --profile=~/.config/guix/mes --manifest=build-aux/manifest.scm
20 . ~/.config/guix/mes/etc/profile
23 There are two major modes to build Mes: true bootstrap and
27 To help development we assume ./configure sets these variables for make
30 CC32 -- i686-unknown-linux-gnu-gcc (or on x86, also gcc)
31 CC64 -- gcc for use with Mes C Library: -nostdinc, -nostdlib
38 Mes is supposed to serve as a full equivalent for Guile, however Mes
39 ~30 times slower than Guile. That's why we usually don't use Mes
42 Gcc is used to verify the sanity of our C sources.
44 i686-unknown-linux-gnu-gcc is used to compare hex/assembly, to test
45 the gcc variant of Mes C Libirary.
46 Target prefix: mes-gcc.
48 gcc (CC64) -nostdinc,-nostdlib is used to compare hex/assembly, to test
49 the 64bit variant of Mes C Library.
50 Target prefix: x86_64-mes-gcc.
52 Guile is used to develop MesCC, the C compiler in Scheme that during
53 bootstrapping will be executed by Mes.
55 mes is built from src/*.c and some out/src/*.h files that are snarfed from
56 src/*.c by build-aux/mes-snarf.scm.
58 Running ./make.scm produces a `script' file.
64 In bootstrap mode, we don't have gcc (CC), we don't have a 32 bit gcc
65 (CC32), we have no guile (GUILE)...but we should have hex2, M1, and
66 mes.M1. That's a bootstrap problem which is currently ignored by
67 using the mes-seed package. mes.M1 will be produced by M2-Planet from
73 *** release 0.x, unsorted
74 - replace bootstrap utils with Gash: bash, coreutils, grep, gzip,
76 - tcc: remove or upstream patches from tcc-boot.
77 - tcc: build 0.9.27 directly instead of via 0.9.26, see tinycc
78 wip-bootstrappable@0.9.27 branch
80 - mes: prepare src/mes.c for M2-Planet transpiler,
81 Jeremiah branched-out from mes; see https://github.com/oriansj/mes-m2.
82 - mes: real module support, bonus for supporting Guile's define-module/define-public syntax.
83 - mes/mescc: bootstrap a minimal-Guile?
84 + libguile/{eval,init,list,strings,values,..}.c
86 - mescc: have mes-tcc pass all scaffold/tests, scaffold/tinycc tests.
87 - mescc: support long long?
88 - mescc: full support for floats?
89 - mescc: some success with 8cc,pcc,guile/libguile/eval.c?
90 - build: guile/guix/make.scm: add file-types, intermediate, hash all dependencies
91 - get full source syntax-case up (Andre van Tonder?) OR drop it.
92 https://srfi.schemers.org/srfi-72/srfi-72.html
93 psyntax/syntax-case and rewrite Nyacc without syntax-case+R7RS Ellipsis.
94 - mescc: split-off MesCC as as standalone Guile C compiler project.
96 - more architectures (does GuixSD require this, i.e. before 1.0?).
98 *** 0.18 GNU mes now supports GuixSD bootstrap (x86,x86_64) and has native x86_64 support.
99 *** 0.17.1 GNU Mes now allows removing glibc, binutils and gcc from the GuixSD bootstrap.
100 *** 0.17 GNU Mes is now an official GNU project and bootstraps gcc-4.7.4.
101 *** 0.16.1 Mes now has info docs and installs ootb on Debian buster/testing.
102 *** 0.16 Mes Lib C now bootstraps glibc-2.2.5, binutils-2.20.1, gcc-4.1.0.
103 *** 0.15: MesCC now has a libc+gnu that supports compiling binutils-2.14, gcc-2.95.3 and glibc-2.2.5.
104 *** 0.14: Mes+MesCC now compiles a slightly patched self-hosting tcc.
105 *** 0.13: Mes+MesCC now compiles a modified, functional tcc.c (~25,000LOC) in 1h30'.
106 *** 0.12: Mes+MesCC now compiles mes.c (~3000LOC) in ~4min.
107 *** 0.11: MesCC now compiles a mes-tcc that passes 26/69 of mescc's C tests.
108 *** 0.10: Mescc now compiles a mes-tcc that compiles a trivial C to a running a.out.
109 *** 0.9: Mescc now writes M1 macro assembly files and compiles tcc.
110 *** 0.8: Mescc now writes object files in stage0's labeled hex2 format.
111 *** 0.7: Mescc supports -E, -c, -o options, include more complete set of header files,
112 enough to work on compiling tinycc's tcc.c albeit a somewhat modified version.
113 *** 0.6: Work with unmodified, unbundled Nyacc; compile 33/55 tinycc's tests/test2 suite.
114 *** 0.5: Mutual self-hosting Scheme interpreter and C compiler: mes.c and mescc,
115 Support call-with-current-continuation, refactor catch/throw
116 *** 0.4: Support Nyacc, Gcc-compiled Mes compiles minimal main.c using nyacc
117 *** 0.3: Garbage collector
118 *** 0.2: Support psyntax
119 *** 0.1: Mes eval/apply feature complete; support syntax-rules, compile main.c using LALR, dump ELF
123 MES_DEBUG=<level> mes
127 - included SCM modules and sources
133 - parsed, expanded program
136 - opened input strings
138 5) usage of opened input strings
142 ** mes: gcc-x86 compiled, tests/srfi-13.test number->string INT-MIN fails:
143 test: number->string INT-MIN: fail
144 expected: -2147483648
146 ** tcc: tcc-built lib/libc+tcc.c segfaults with mes, with tcc.
147 ** mes: remove pmatch-car/pmatch-cdr hack.
148 ** mescc: softcode stack frame size, now hardcoded and very large
149 ** mes+mescc: parse tcc.c->tcc.E works, compile tcc.E -> tcc.M1 segfaults.
150 time GUILE_LOAD_PATH=/home/janneke/src/nyacc/module:$GUILE_LOAD_PATH ../mes/scripts/mescc -E -o tcc.E -I . -I ../mes/lib -I ../mes/include -D 'CONFIG_TCCDIR="usr/lib/tcc"' -D 'CONFIG_TCC_CRTPREFIX="usr/lib:{B}/lib:."' -D 'CONFIG_TCC_ELFINTERP="/gnu/store/70jxsnpffkl7fdb7qv398n8yi1a3w5nx-glibc-2.26.105-g0890d5379c/lib/ld-linux.so.2"' -D 'CONFIG_TCC_LIBPATHS="/home/janneke/src/tinycc/usr/lib:{B}/lib:."' -D 'CONFIG_TCC_SYSINCLUDEPATHS="../mes/include:usr/include:{B}/include"' -D CONFIG_USE_LIBGCC=1 -D 'TCC_LIBGCC="/home/janneke/src/tinycc/usr/lib/libc+tcc-gcc.mlibc-o"' -D CONFIG_TCC_STATIC=1 -D ONE_SOURCE=yes -D TCC_TARGET_I386=1 -D BOOTSTRAP=1 tcc.c
151 time GUILE_LOAD_PATH=/home/janneke/src/nyacc/module:$GUILE_LOAD_PATH MES_ARENA=200000000 ../mes/scripts/mescc -c -o tcc.M1 tcc.E
152 ** mes: with-fluids: tests/fluids.test test 7 fails with Mes.
153 ** mescc: 7n-struct-struct-array.c: struct file f = {"first.h"};
154 ** test/match.test ("nyacc-simple"): hygiene problem in match
155 * OLD: Booting from LISP-1.5 into Mes
157 Mes started out experimenting with booting from a hex-coded minimal
158 LISP-1.5 (prototype in mes.c), into an almost-RRS Scheme.
160 When EOF is read, the LISP-1.5 machine calls loop2 from loop2.mes,
161 which reads the rest of stdin and takes over control. The functions
162 readenv, eval and apply-env in mes.mes introduced define, define-macro
163 quasiquote and macro expansion.
165 While this works, it's amazingly slow. We implemented a full reader
166 in mes.c, which makes running mes:apply-env mes:eval somewhat
167 bearable, still over 1000x slower than running mes.c.
169 Bootstrapping has been removed and mes.c implements enough of RRS to
170 run a macro-based define-syntax and syntax-rules.
172 loop.mes and mes.mes are unused and lagging behind. Probably it's not
173 worth considering this route without a VM. GNU Epsilon is taking the
174 more usual VM-route to provide multiple personas. While that sounds
175 neat, Lisp/Scheme, bootstrapping and trusted binaries are probably not
176 in scope as there is no mention of such things; only ML is mentioned
177 while Guile is used for bootstrapping.
179 * Assorted ideas and info
180 ** Using GDB on assembly/a.out
184 set disassemble-next-line on
185 gdb-display-disassembly-buffer
187 ** Create memory dump with 32 bit Gcc compiled Mes
188 make out/i686-unknown-linux-gnu-mes
189 out/i686-unknown-linux-gnu-mes --dump < module/mes/read-0.mes > module/mes/read-0-32.mo
191 x/s *((char **)($rsp+8))
194 *** [[https://savannah.gnu.org/projects/nyacc][nyacc]]
195 *** PEG: [[http://piumarta.com/software/peg/][parse C using PEG]]
196 *** [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tiny_C_Compiler][Tiny C Compiler]]
197 *** [[http://www.t3x.org/subc/index.html][Sub C]]
198 *** [[https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/comp.lang.lisp/VPuX0VsjTTE][C intepreter in LISP/Scheme/Python]]
200 ** C assembler/linker
201 *** [[http://www.tldp.org/HOWTO/Assembly-HOWTO/linux.html][Assembly HOWTO]]
204 *** [[http://www.muppetlabs.com/~breadbox/software/tiny/][Small ELF programs]]
205 *** [[http://www.cirosantilli.com/elf-hello-world/][Elf hello world]]
206 ** SC - c as s-expressions
207 sc: http://sph.mn/content/3d3
209 *** [[http://www.scheme-reports.org/][Scheme Reports]]
210 *** [[ftp://publications.ai.mit.edu/ai-publications/pdf/AIM-349.pdf][Scheme - Report on Scheme]]
211 *** [[ftp://publications.ai.mit.edu/ai-publications/pdf/AIM-452.pdf][RRS - Revised Report on Scheme]]
214 http://forum.osdev.org/viewtopic.php?f=15&t=19937
216 http://www.stripedgazelle.org/joey/dreamos.html
217 http://armpit.sourceforge.net/
218 http://common-lisp.net/project/movitz/movitz.html
220 <civodul> janneke: https://github.com/namin/inc looks interesting [15:18]
222 <OriansJ> janneke: also, if you look at
223 https://github.com/oriansj/stage0/tree/master/stage2/High_level_prototypes
224 [the garbage collected lisp I implemented], if there are any pieces
225 I could add to finish off your mes lisp bootstrap just let me know
226 because I would be more than happy to do that :D
227 <janneke> OriansJ: that's what I'm hoping for, that our efforts can be
228 complementary and we can work together
229 *** lfam (~lfam@2601:47:4180:2ffb:7c05:17de:cf5f:23ef) has quit: Ping timeout:
231 <janneke> exciting times! [00:23]
232 <janneke> OriansJ: i looked a few times and saw 'LISP empty', so thanks for
234 <civodul> OriansJ, janneke: from that page, there's also:
235 https://web.archive.org/web/20160604035203fw_/http://homepage.ntlworld.com/edmund.grimley-evans/bcompiler.html
238 https://web.archive.org/web/20160604041431/http://homepage.ntlworld.com/edmund.grimley-evans/cc500/cc500.c
239 https://github.com/rswier/c4/blob/master/c4.c
240 ** Compilers for free
241 http://codon.com/compilers-for-free
243 *** [[https://www.mirrorservice.org/sites/www.bitsavers.org/bits/TI/Explorer/zeta-c/][ZETA-C]]
246 *** [[https://github.com/rui314/8cc][8cc]] -- a C11 compiler, but simple
247 8cc is a compiler for the C programming language. It's intended to
248 support all C11 language features while keeping the code as small and
252 https://miyuki.github.io/2017/10/04/gcc-archaeology-1.html
253 *** [[http://tack.sourceforge.net/][ack]]
254 <rain1> it may be possible to compile like this: mes |> ack |> pcc |> tcc |>
255 gcc 4.7.4 |> gcc later version... up to modern
256 *** [[https://web.archive.org/web/20160402225843/http://homepage.ntlworld.com/edmund.grimley-evans/cc500/][cc500]]
257 ** rain1's Bootstrapping Wiki: https://bootstrapping.miraheze.org/wiki/Main_Page
259 https://notabug.org/rain1/hex86/src/master/tests/hex0b3.hex86
260 ** <pdewacht> janneke, have you ever tried testing mescc with csmith? [10:55]
261 ** <pdewacht> e.g. as described here
262 https://jamey.thesharps.us/2016/07/15/testing-strategies-for-corrode/
263 ("Randomized testing with Csmith and C-Reduce") [10:58]