-*- org -*- #+TITLE: Hacking GNU Mes Copyright © 2016,2017,2018 Jan (janneke) Nieuwenhuizen 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. * SETUP guix environment -l .guix.scm #64 bit + 32bit or guix environment --system=i686-linux -l .guix.scm #32 bit only or guix package --profile=~/.config/guix/mes --manifest=build-aux/manifest.scm . ~/.config/guix/mes/etc/profile * BUILD There are two major modes to build Mes: true bootstrap and development. ** DEVELOPMENT BUILD To help development we assume ./configure sets these variables for make CC -- gcc (or i686-unknown-linux-gnu-gcc sans libc) GUILE -- guile HEX2 -- hex2 MES -- unset M1 -- M1 prefix -- "" Mes is supposed to serve as a full equivalent for Guile, however Mes is still about 2 to 10 times slower than Guile. That's why we usually don't use Mes during development. Gcc is used to verify the sanity of our C sources. i686-unknown-linux-gnu-gcc is used to compare hex/assembly, to test the gcc variant of Mes C Libirary. Target prefix: x86-mes-gcc. gcc -nostdinc,-nostdlib is used to compare hex/assembly, to test the 64bit variant of Mes C Library. Target prefix: x86_64-mes-gcc. Guile is used to develop MesCC, the C compiler in Scheme that during bootstrapping will be executed by Mes. ** BOOTSTRAP BUILD ./configure.sh [--prefix=PREFIX] ./build.sh ./install.sh In bootstrap mode, we don't have gcc (CC), we don't have a 32 bit gcc, we have no guile (GUILE)...but we should have hex2, M1, and mes.M1. That's a bootstrap problem which is currently ignored by using the mes-seed package. mes.M1 will be produced by M2-Planet from mes.c. * ROADMAP ** TODO *** release 0.x, unsorted - mes: prepare src/mes.c for M2-Planet transpiler, Jeremiah branched-out from mes; see https://github.com/oriansj/mes-m2. - mes/mescc: proper docstrings, api reference documentation. - replace bootstrap-binaries with Gash: bash, coreutils, grep, gzip, sed, tar. - mes: real module support, Guile compatible (define-module, define-public, export). - mescc: ARMv7/AArch64 support. *** after release 1.0 - replace initial gcc-2.95.3 with gcc-3.x or 4.x - use 3rd party libc (ucLibc, dietlibc, ...) after Mes and reduce need for bootstrappably-rich Mes C Library? - mes/mescc: bootstrap a `bootstrap-Guile' before bootstrapping tcc? - tcc: remove or upstream patches from tcc-boot. - tcc: build 0.9.27 directly instead of via 0.9.26, see tinycc wip-bootstrappable@0.9.27 branch - mes/mescc: bootstrap a minimal-Guile? + libguile/{eval,init,list,strings,values,..}. + ice-9/eval.scm - mescc: have mes-tcc pass all scaffold/tests, scaffold/tinycc tests. - syntax-case bootstrap problem + resolve portable syntax-case bootstrap, or + get full source syntax-case up (Andre van Tonder?) https://srfi.schemers.org/srfi-72/srfi-72.html, or + ... drop it? - mescc: the Hurd support. ** DONE *** 0.19 GNU mes now compiles TinyCC in ~8min and supports building Bash and GNU Tar. *** 0.18 GNU mes now supports GuixSD bootstrap (x86,x86_64) and has native x86_64 support. *** 0.17.1 GNU Mes now allows removing glibc, binutils and gcc from the GuixSD bootstrap. *** 0.17 GNU Mes is now an official GNU project and bootstraps gcc-4.7.4. *** 0.16.1 Mes now has info docs and installs ootb on Debian buster/testing. *** 0.16 Mes Lib C now bootstraps glibc-2.2.5, binutils-2.20.1, gcc-4.1.0. *** 0.15: MesCC now has a libc+gnu that supports compiling binutils-2.14, gcc-2.95.3 and glibc-2.2.5. *** 0.14: Mes+MesCC now compiles a slightly patched self-hosting tcc. *** 0.13: Mes+MesCC now compiles a modified, functional tcc.c (~25,000LOC) in 1h30'. *** 0.12: Mes+MesCC now compiles mes.c (~3000LOC) in ~4min. *** 0.11: MesCC now compiles a mes-tcc that passes 26/69 of mescc's C tests. *** 0.10: Mescc now compiles a mes-tcc that compiles a trivial C to a running a.out. *** 0.9: Mescc now writes M1 macro assembly files and compiles tcc. *** 0.8: Mescc now writes object files in stage0's labeled hex2 format. *** 0.7: Mescc supports -E, -c, -o options, include more complete set of header files, enough to work on compiling tinycc's tcc.c albeit a somewhat modified version. *** 0.6: Work with unmodified, unbundled Nyacc; compile 33/55 tinycc's tests/test2 suite. *** 0.5: Mutual self-hosting Scheme interpreter and C compiler: mes.c and mescc, Support call-with-current-continuation, refactor catch/throw *** 0.4: Support Nyacc, Gcc-compiled Mes compiles minimal main.c using nyacc *** 0.3: Garbage collector *** 0.2: Support psyntax *** 0.1: Mes eval/apply feature complete; support syntax-rules, compile main.c using LALR, dump ELF * DEBUG MES_DEBUG= mes ** Levels 1) Informational: - MODULEDIR - included SCM modules and sources - result of program - gc stats at exit 2) opened files 3) runtime gc stats 4) detailed info - parsed, expanded program - list of builtins - list of symbol - opened input strings - gc details 5) lots of data - usage of opened input strings - bytes read 6) globals * Bugs ** mes: performance, Mes is now 2-10x slower than Guile. ** mes/mescc lack support for the Hurd. ** mes: gcc-x86_64 compiled mes segfaults with small arena, or gc_up_arena. ** mes: gcc-x86 compiled, tests/srfi-13.test number->string INT-MIN fails: test: number->string INT-MIN: fail expected: -2147483648 actual: -./,),(-*,( ** tcc: tcc-built lib/libc+tcc.c segfaults with mes, with tcc. ** mes: remove pmatch-car/pmatch-cdr hack. ** mescc: softcode stack frame size, now hardcoded and very large ** mes+mescc: parse tcc.c->tcc.E works, compile tcc.E -> tcc.M1 segfaults. time GUILE_LOAD_PATH=/home/janneke/src/nyacc/module:$GUILE_LOAD_PATH ../mes/scripts/mescc -E -o tcc.E -I . -I ../mes/lib -I ../mes/include -D 'CONFIG_TCCDIR="usr/lib/tcc"' -D 'CONFIG_TCC_CRTPREFIX="usr/lib:{B}/lib:."' -D 'CONFIG_TCC_ELFINTERP="/gnu/store/70jxsnpffkl7fdb7qv398n8yi1a3w5nx-glibc-2.26.105-g0890d5379c/lib/ld-linux.so.2"' -D 'CONFIG_TCC_LIBPATHS="/home/janneke/src/tinycc/usr/lib:{B}/lib:."' -D 'CONFIG_TCC_SYSINCLUDEPATHS="../mes/include:usr/include:{B}/include"' -D CONFIG_USE_LIBGCC=1 -D 'TCC_LIBGCC="/home/janneke/src/tinycc/usr/lib/libc+tcc-gcc.mlibc-o"' -D CONFIG_TCC_STATIC=1 -D ONE_SOURCE=yes -D TCC_TARGET_I386=1 -D BOOTSTRAP=1 tcc.c time GUILE_LOAD_PATH=/home/janneke/src/nyacc/module:$GUILE_LOAD_PATH MES_ARENA=200000000 ../mes/scripts/mescc -c -o tcc.M1 tcc.E ** mescc: 7n-struct-struct-array.c: struct file f = {"first.h"}; ** test/match.test ("nyacc-simple"): hygiene problem in match * OLD: Booting from LISP-1.5 into Mes Mes started out experimenting with booting from a hex-coded minimal LISP-1.5 (prototype in mes.c), into an almost-RRS Scheme. When EOF is read, the LISP-1.5 machine calls loop2 from loop2.mes, which reads the rest of stdin and takes over control. The functions readenv, eval and apply-env in mes.mes introduced define, define-macro quasiquote and macro expansion. While this works, it's amazingly slow. We implemented a full reader in mes.c, which makes running mes:apply-env mes:eval somewhat bearable, still over 1000x slower than running mes.c. Bootstrapping has been removed and mes.c implements enough of RRS to run a macro-based define-syntax and syntax-rules. loop.mes and mes.mes are unused and lagging behind. Probably it's not worth considering this route without a VM. GNU Epsilon is taking the more usual VM-route to provide multiple personas. While that sounds neat, Lisp/Scheme, bootstrapping and trusted binaries are probably not in scope as there is no mention of such things; only ML is mentioned while Guile is used for bootstrapping. * Assorted ideas and info ** Using GDB on assembly/a.out info registers p/x $eax p/x $edx set disassemble-next-line on gdb-display-disassembly-buffer b *0x804a79d ** Create memory dump with 32 bit Gcc compiled Mes make out/i686-unknown-linux-gnu-mes out/i686-unknown-linux-gnu-mes --dump < module/mes/read-0.mes > module/mes/read-0-32.mo x/s *((char **)($rsp+8)) ** C parser/compiler *** [[https://savannah.gnu.org/projects/nyacc][nyacc]] *** PEG: [[http://piumarta.com/software/peg/][parse C using PEG]] *** [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tiny_C_Compiler][Tiny C Compiler]] *** [[http://www.t3x.org/subc/index.html][Sub C]] *** [[https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/comp.lang.lisp/VPuX0VsjTTE][C intepreter in LISP/Scheme/Python]] ** C assembler/linker *** [[http://www.tldp.org/HOWTO/Assembly-HOWTO/linux.html][Assembly HOWTO]] *** ELF 7f 45 4c 46 *** [[http://www.muppetlabs.com/~breadbox/software/tiny/][Small ELF programs]] *** [[http://www.cirosantilli.com/elf-hello-world/][Elf hello world]] ** SC - c as s-expressions sc: http://sph.mn/content/3d3 ** RNRS *** [[http://www.scheme-reports.org/][Scheme Reports]] *** [[ftp://publications.ai.mit.edu/ai-publications/pdf/AIM-349.pdf][Scheme - Report on Scheme]] *** [[ftp://publications.ai.mit.edu/ai-publications/pdf/AIM-452.pdf][RRS - Revised Report on Scheme]] ** tiny schemes http://forum.osdev.org/viewtopic.php?f=15&t=19937 http://www.stripedgazelle.org/joey/dreamos.html http://armpit.sourceforge.net/ http://common-lisp.net/project/movitz/movitz.html janneke: https://github.com/namin/inc looks interesting [15:18] ** Orians Jeremiah janneke: also, if you look at https://github.com/oriansj/stage0/tree/master/stage2/High_level_prototypes [the garbage collected lisp I implemented], if there are any pieces I could add to finish off your mes lisp bootstrap just let me know because I would be more than happy to do that :D OriansJ: that's what I'm hoping for, that our efforts can be complementary and we can work together *** lfam (~lfam@2601:47:4180:2ffb:7c05:17de:cf5f:23ef) has quit: Ping timeout: 246 seconds [00:22] exciting times! [00:23] OriansJ: i looked a few times and saw 'LISP empty', so thanks for the pointer! [00:24] OriansJ, janneke: from that page, there's also: https://web.archive.org/web/20160604035203fw_/http://homepage.ntlworld.com/edmund.grimley-evans/bcompiler.html ** C4/C500 https://web.archive.org/web/20160604041431/http://homepage.ntlworld.com/edmund.grimley-evans/cc500/cc500.c https://github.com/rswier/c4/blob/master/c4.c ** Compilers for free http://codon.com/compilers-for-free ** Small lisps *** [[https://www.mirrorservice.org/sites/www.bitsavers.org/bits/TI/Explorer/zeta-c/][ZETA-C]] ** Small C compilers *** tinycc *** [[https://github.com/rui314/8cc][8cc]] -- a C11 compiler, but simple 8cc is a compiler for the C programming language. It's intended to support all C11 language features while keeping the code as small and simple as possible. *** pcc *** early GCC? https://miyuki.github.io/2017/10/04/gcc-archaeology-1.html *** [[http://tack.sourceforge.net/][ack]] it may be possible to compile like this: mes |> ack |> pcc |> tcc |> gcc 4.7.4 |> gcc later version... up to modern *** [[https://web.archive.org/web/20160402225843/http://homepage.ntlworld.com/edmund.grimley-evans/cc500/][cc500]] ** rain1's Bootstrapping Wiki: https://bootstrapping.miraheze.org/wiki/Main_Page ** rain1's hex86 https://notabug.org/rain1/hex86/src/master/tests/hex0b3.hex86 ** janneke, have you ever tried testing mescc with csmith? [10:55] ** e.g. as described here https://jamey.thesharps.us/2016/07/15/testing-strategies-for-corrode/ ("Randomized testing with Csmith and C-Reduce") [10:58]