#+COMMENT: -*- org -*-
#+TITLE: About GNU Mes
#+SUBTITLE: Maxwell Equations of Software
[[https://www.gnu.org/software/mes][GNU Mes]] is a Scheme interpreter and C compiler for bootstrapping the GNU
System. Since version 0.22 it has again helped to halve the size of
opaque, uninspectable binary seeds that are currently being used in the
[[https://guix.gnu.org/blog/2019/guix-reduces-bootstrap-seed-by-50/][Reduced Binary Seed bootstrap]] of [[https://www.gnu.org/software/guix][GNU Guix]]. The final goal is to help
create a full source bootstrap as part of the [[http://bootstrappable.org][bootstrappable builds]]
effort for UNIX-like operating systems.
The Scheme interpreter is written in ~5,000 LOC of simple C, and the C
compiler written in Scheme and these are mutual self-hosting. This
mes.c is [[https://github.com/oriansj/mes-m2][being simplified]] to be transpiled by [[https://github.com/oriansj/m2-planet][M2-Planet]].
Mes has a Garbage Collector, a library of loadable Scheme modules--
notably Dominique Boucher's [[https://github.com/schemeway/lalr-scm][LALR]], Pre-R6RS [[https://www.cs.indiana.edu/chezscheme/syntax-case/old-psyntax.html][portable syntax-case]] with
R7RS ellipsis, Matt Wette's [[https://www.nongnu.org/nyacc][Nyacc]] --and test suite, just enough to
support a REPL and a C99 compiler: mescc.
Mes+MesCC can compile an only [[http://gitlab.com/janneke/tinycc][lightly patched TinyCC]] that is
self-hosting. Using this tcc and the Mes C library we now have a
Reduced Binary Seed bootstrap for the gnutools triplet: glibc-2.2.5,
binutils-2.20.1, gcc-2.95.3. This is enough to bootstrap Guix for
i686-linux and x86_64-linux.
Mes is inspired by The Maxwell Equations of Software: [[http://www.softwarepreservation.org/projects/LISP/book/LISP%201.5%20Programmers%20Manual.pdf][LISP-1.5]] -- John
McCarthy page 13, GNU Guix's source/binary packaging transparency and
Jeremiah Orians's [[https://github.com/oriansj/stage0][stage0]] ~500 byte self-hosting hex assembler.
GNU Mes is free software, it is distributed under the terms of the GNU
General Public Licence version 3 or later. See the file [[file:COPYING][COPYING]].
* Get it
#+BEGIN_SRC bash
git clone git://git.savannah.gnu.org/mes.git
#+END_SRC
* Build it (see [[file:INSTALL][INSTALL]] for full instructions)
#+BEGIN_SRC bash
./configure
make all
make check
#+END_SRC
* REPL it
#+BEGIN_SRC bash
./pre-inst-env mes
#+END_SRC
* MesCC compiler
#+BEGIN_SRC bash
./pre-inst-env mescc -c scaffold/main.c
#+END_SRC
* Bugs
Please send Mes bug reports to [[mailto:bug-mes@gnu.org][bug-mes@gnu.org]].
* Links
[0] https://www.gnu.org/software/mes
[1] https://guix.gnu.org/blog/2019/guix-reduces-bootstrap-seed-by-50/
[2] https://www.gnu.org/software/guix
[3] https://bootstrappable.org
[4] https://github.com/oriansj/mes-m2
[5] https://github.com/oriansj/m2-planet
[6] https://github.com/schemeway/lalr-scm
[7] https://www.cs.indiana.edu/chezscheme/syntax-case/old-psyntax.html
[8] https://www.nongnu.org/nyacc
[9] https://gitlab.com/janneke/tinycc
[10] [[http://www.softwarepreservation.org/projects/LISP/book/LISP%201.5%20Programmers%20Manual.pdf]]
[11] https://github.com/oriansj/stage0
* Legalese
Copyright © 2016,2017,2018,2019 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.
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