mes/PORTING

#+COMMENT:                                                            -*- org -*-
#+TITLE: Porting GNU Mes

* Porting GNU Mes to ARM

The ARM port can be found in wip-arm on savannah.

For development, we use Guix's qemu-binfmt-service-type.

** Guix Setup, see [[info:guix#Virtualization%20Services][Virtualization Services]].

Add something like
   #+BEGIN_SRC scheme
      (service qemu-binfmt-service-type
               (qemu-binfmt-configuration
                (platforms (lookup-qemu-platforms "arm"))
                (guix-support? #t)))
   #+END_SRC
to your config.scm and run guix system reconfigure.

** Setup environment

For example (note: ARM is no longer a 'port', see HACKING)
   #+BEGIN_SRC bash
   guix shell --system=armhf-linux --pure bash coreutils diffutils findutils gawk gcc-toolchain grep git-minimal guile gzip help2man make mescc-tools nyacc@1.00.2 openssh-sans-x pkg-config sed tar texinfo
   guix shell --system=aarch64-linux --pure bash coreutils diffutils findutils gawk gcc-toolchain grep git-minimal guile gzip help2man m2-planet make mescc-tools nyacc@1.00.2 openssh-sans-x pkg-config sed tar texinfo
   guix shell --system=riscv64-linux --pure bash coreutils diffutils findutils gawk gcc-toolchain grep git-minimal guile gzip help2man m2-planet make mescc-tools nyacc@1.00.2 openssh-sans-x pkg-config sed tar texinfo
   #+END_SRC

** Try it
   #+BEGIN_SRC bash
   CC=gnu-triplet-gcc ./configure --with-courage --with-system-libc
   ./simple.sh
   #+END_SRC

some failures are expected.

** Build it
   #+BEGIN_SRC bash
   ./configure --with-courage --with-system-libc
   make MES=guile
   make check
   #+END_SRC

expect many failures.  Non-system-libc, i.e. using the Mes C Library is currently WIP.

* Porting GNU Mes to x86_64

The x86_64 port is almost done, only a few bugs remain.  The Guix
bootstrap for x86_64 uses x86 mes and that is not expected to change.

* Porting GNU Mes to GNU/Hurd

The Hurd port can be found in wip-hurd on savannah.  For development, we
use a Debian GNU/Hurd vm.

* Porting GNU Mes to FreeBSD
The FreeBSD port can be found in wip-freebsd on savannah.

* Porting the Reduced Binary Seed bootstrap to NixOS
The NixOS port of the Reduced Binary Seed bootstrap lives on the
mes-bootstrap branch in https://github.com/xwvvvvwx/nixpkgs

* Porting the Reduced Binary Seed bootstrap to Debian GNU/Linux
To port the Reduced Binary Seed bootstrap to a traditional distribution
such as Debian, two things need to happen: the bootstrap must be ported
and the distribution build process needs to change to start from a only
binary seed.

The porting aspect is probably easiest: we start by packaging GNU Mes as
a regular package.  Having Mes built as a regular package, we can then
build a bootstrap Mes.  This bootstrap Mes can be used to build tinycc,
and so on.

Once we have shown that the Debian base system can be bootstrapped from
a Reduced Binary seed, thus significantly reducing the Trusted Computing
Base (TCB), strategic decisions about the build process can start.

* Legalese
Copyright © 2019,2022,2023 Jan (janneke) Nieuwenhuizen <[[mailto:janneke@gnu.org][janneke@gnu.org]]>

  Copying and distribution of this file, with or without modification,
  are permitted in any medium without royalty provided the copyright
  notice and this notice are preserved.