mes/doc/announce/ANNOUNCE-0.6

Subject: Mes 0.6 released

I am pleased to announce the release of Mes 0.6, representing 32
commits over 24 days.  Mescc now works with vanilla Nyacc 0.78.3
(thanks Matt!), Nyacc has been unbundled and Mescc compiles 33/55
of tinycc test2 tests.

* About

    Mes aims to create full source bootstrapping for GuixSD: an
    entirely source-based bootstrap path.  The target is to [have
    GuixSD] boostrap from a minimal, easily inspectable binary --that
    should be readable as source-- into something close to R6RS
    Scheme.

    It currently consists of a mutual self-hosting [close to Guile-]
    Scheme interpreter prototype in C and a Nyacc-based C compiler in
    [Guile] Scheme.

    The Scheme interpreter prototype (mes.c) has a Garbage Collector,
    a library of loadable Scheme modules-- notably Dominique Boucher's
    LALR[1], Pre-R6RS portable syntax-case[2] with R7RS ellipsis, Matt
    Wette's Nyacc[3] Guile's PEG[4] --and test suite just barely
    enough to support a simple REPL (repl.mes) and simple C-compiler
    (mescc.mes) that can produce the second initial ELF binary from
    binary from mes.c, in only about 2h30'.

    Mes was inspired by The Maxwell Equations of Software: LISP-1.5[5]
    -- John McCarthy page 13, GNU Guix's[6] source/binary packaging
    transparency and Jeremiah Orians's stage0[7] bootstrap project.

* Download

    git clone https://gitlab.com/janneke/mes

    wget https://gitlab.com/janneke/mes/repository/archive.tar.gz?ref=v0.6 -O mes-0.6.tar.gz

Mes runs from the source tree and can also be built, packaged and
installed in Guix[SD] by the usual

    guix package -f guix.scm

* Changes in 0.6 since 0.5
 ** Core
 *** configure, build now supports x86 and development for arm with-courage.
 ** Language
 *** Nyacc has been unbundled and is now a dependency.
 *** Mes now supports case-lambda.
 *** Mes reader now supports abbreviated form for return character #\cr.
 *** 1 new function
 string-index.
 ** Mescc
 *** Mescc can be used on regular C sources, like tinycc's tests/test2 suite.
 *** make check passes 33/55 of tinycc's test suite etest/test2 tests.
 *** Mescc now recognizes `short' as a type.
 *** Mescc now supports sizeof (<identifier>), sizeof(<expression>).
 *** Mescc now respects enum field initializers and supports enum variables.
 *** Mescc now supports binary constants .
 *** Mescc now supports assignments from ==, != boolean expressions .
 *** Mescc now supports &, ^.
 *** Mescc now supports struct pointers.
 *** Mescc now supports struct definition with immediatete variable declaration.
 *** Mescc now supports calling (returning correctly from) void functions.
 *** Mescc now handles case statements breaks without compound correctly.
 *** Mescc now has better [int/pointer] array support.
 *** Mescc now has better support for simple (non-array-)structs.
 *** Mescc now supports multiple declarations in one statement like: int a,b;
 **** 2 new mlibc functions
 printf, strcpy.
 ** Noteworthy bug fixes
 *** Installed mes and mes.repl now also run outside of source tree again.

Greetings,
janneke

[1] https://github.com/schemeway/lalr-scm
[2] https://www.cs.indiana.edu/chezscheme/syntax-case/old-psyntax.html
[3] https://www.nongnu.org/nyacc/
[4] https://www.gnu.org/software/guile/docs/master/guile.html/PEG-Parsing.html
[5] http://www.softwarepreservation.org/projects/LISP/book/LISP%201.5%20Programmers%20Manual.pdf
[6] https://www.gnu.org/software/guix/
[7] https://github.com/oriansj/stage0