mes/doc/announce/ANNOUNCE-0.7

Subject: Mes 0.7 released

I am pleased to announce the release of Mes 0.7, representing 32
commits over 4 weeks.  Mescc now behaves more like a regular C
compiler: supporting -E, -c, -o options and with a more complete set
of header files [stubs]; enough to work on compiling tinycc's tcc.c
albeit a somewhat modified version[8].

* 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=v0.7 -O mes-0.7.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 0.7 since 0.6
 ** Core
 *** The minimal C reader is now always included; dependencies
 on i686-unknown-linux-gnu-gcc and binary read-0-32.mo have been
 dropped, these are now optional.
 ** Language
 *** Mes reader now supports octal numbers #oXXX.
 *** 10 new functions
 current-output-port, getopt-long, negate, open-output-file,
 option-ref, set-current-output-port, string-rindex, string-suffix?,
 with-ouwith-output-to-file, with-output-to-port.
 ** Mescc
 *** Mescc can now be installed and used alongside a gcc installation.
 *** Mescc can now handle const anywhere.
 *** Mescc now supports array fields in structs.
 *** Mescc now supports forward declarations and typedef.
 *** Mescc can now handle comments anywhere.
 *** Mescc now supports addition and substraction for enum field values.
 *** Mescc now supports anonymous enums.
 *** Mescc now supports all C99 header files needed to compile tcc.c.
 *** build: C sources are now preprocessed separately, then compiled and linked.
 *** build: mlibc and C sources are now compiled separately and then linked.
 *** mlibc has been moved from Scheme snippets into C.
 *** Mescc now supports -c, -D, -E, -I and -o options.
 **** open now supports optional third mode parameter.
 ** Noteworthy bug fixes
 *** string-index now supports function predicate.
 *** number->string for radix > 10 now produces `a' instead of `:'.

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
[8] https://gitlab.com/janneke/tinycc