[9fans] [APExp] which non-9front Plan9 variants are active? (for portability testing)

[9fans] [APExp] which non-9front Plan9 variants are active? (for portability testing)

[Jens Staal]

Dear all,

I am building a "portable APE" (APExp) with several 3rd party utilities and
libraries included, and several experimental patches.

the first release:
https://github.com/staalmannen/APExp/releases/tag/v0.1
builds reliably on amd64 9front in a clean VM

I would like to test the other Plan9 variants too to make sure that it
is as portable as possible. It does pull in things from /sys/src, and
there may be 9front-specific things there that I would have to pull in
to the APExp source tree to make it portable across Plan9 variants.

Which Plan9 variants should I test?
9atom? 9legacy? any others?

------------------------------------------
9fans: 9fans
Permalink: https://9fans.topicbox.com/groups/9fans/T399a5d787978799e-Ma86984997211728c074b4da0
Delivery options: https://9fans.topicbox.com/groups/9fans/subscription

Re: [9fans] [APExp] which non-9front Plan9 variants are active? (for portability testing)

[Steve Simon]

personally i would avoid having curses (on plan9), and all that depends on it - but perhaps i am too dogmatic.

re cfront
this really is a relic, i never even managed to get vlong support into it (which in needed for “modern” plan9.

there was a commercial c++ compiler for plan9 at one point, but i don’t think it fledged.

these days go would be a better target imho.

-Steve
 
------------------------------------------
9fans: 9fans
Permalink: https://9fans.topicbox.com/groups/9fans/T399a5d787978799e-M4f25bf3e0422914a8a7de9eb
Delivery options: https://9fans.topicbox.com/groups/9fans/subscription

Re: [9fans] [APExp] which non-9front Plan9 variants are active? (for portability testing)

[Jens Staal]

On Tue, Sep 17, 2024 at 10:41:32PM GMT, Steve Simon wrote:
> 
> personally i would avoid having curses (on plan9), and all that depends on it - but perhaps i am too dogmatic.
>

Thanks for the feedback. On this point we have to agree to disagree.
Curses is included because it is a very common dependency. The point of
APExp is to be a low-threshold build environment for 3rd party software.
This means adhering to a very low "ideological purity". I have already
replaced several APE utilities with GNU and sbase counterparts that
helps running configure scripts etc.

This "contamination" with 3rd party libraries and utilities that may feel out 
of place on Plan9 will for sure continue.

> re cfront
> this really is a relic, i never even managed to get vlong support into it (which in needed for “modern” plan9.
> 

Here I do agree. cfront and the other transpilers (p2c for pascal, f2c
for fortran, bacon for BASIC (will depend on bash, so that one might be
very far into the future), the objc-to-c transpiler) are more "toys"
that I plan to include for fun. They are however low-priority.

> there was a commercial c++ compiler for plan9 at one point, but i don’t think it fledged.
> 

Indeed coumeau, which I think evolved from cfront. This would not really
be a good fit. If I really wanted to get c++ working I would rather pick
up on the old gcc port, but the way it was working, the object file
format was not compatible with the native plan9/APE libraries so you
basically had to have another set of libraries built for gcc, and it was
only 386. Going that path, I think Harvey OS is a better fit.

> these days go would be a better target imho.
> 

I agree, but go does not really lend itself to source-only distribution
and building from scratch (you have to start from a go binary). For
APExp, I am in that case more interested in updating other old language ports
written in C which also may help running some configure scripts (perl, python).

> -Steve

------------------------------------------
9fans: 9fans
Permalink: https://9fans.topicbox.com/groups/9fans/T399a5d787978799e-Mb8f1c88402b1cb64b8f01b4f
Delivery options: https://9fans.topicbox.com/groups/9fans/subscription

Re: [9fans] [APExp] which non-9front Plan9 variants are active? (for portability testing)

[arnold]

Although Plan 9 has some version of BWK's awk on it, I'd be
curious if you can get gawk running in your extended APE.

Thanks,

Arnold

------------------------------------------
9fans: 9fans
Permalink: https://9fans.topicbox.com/groups/9fans/T399a5d787978799e-M19098a01e7d0a7fcf5901576
Delivery options: https://9fans.topicbox.com/groups/9fans/subscription

Re: [9fans] [APExp] which non-9front Plan9 variants are active? (for portability testing)

[Jens Staal]

Yes in fact in the 0.1 release, I am using gawk 4.0.0 (an old port) as
default awk.

Current "main" branch is broken because I am in the middle of an upgrade
to 5.3.0 (I have gotten all the components to compile, but there are
some missing components during linking that I need to figure out).

I am also using gmake, gsed, flex, byacc (should perhaps try to build
bison) as default utilities in APExp.

Common issues during configure/make now seems to be related to missing
m4, so this is probably next on my TODO (after I have gotten gawk 5.3.0
to work).

On Tue, Sep 17, 2024 at 11:18:11PM GMT, arnold@skeeve.com wrote:
> Although Plan 9 has some version of BWK's awk on it, I'd be
> curious if you can get gawk running in your extended APE.
> 
> Thanks,
> 
> Arnold

------------------------------------------
9fans: 9fans
Permalink: https://9fans.topicbox.com/groups/9fans/T399a5d787978799e-M686eb9c103d0c3e2ba71de48
Delivery options: https://9fans.topicbox.com/groups/9fans/subscription

Re: [9fans] [APExp] which non-9front Plan9 variants are active? (for portability testing)

[arnold]

Thanks for the info.  FYI, just this morning I released gawk 5.3.1;
it should be on ftp.gnu.org by now. If not, it will be soon.

Thanks!

Arnold

Jens Staal <staal1978@gmail.com> wrote:

> Yes in fact in the 0.1 release, I am using gawk 4.0.0 (an old port) as
> default awk.
>
> Current "main" branch is broken because I am in the middle of an upgrade
> to 5.3.0 (I have gotten all the components to compile, but there are
> some missing components during linking that I need to figure out).
>
> I am also using gmake, gsed, flex, byacc (should perhaps try to build
> bison) as default utilities in APExp.
>
> Common issues during configure/make now seems to be related to missing
> m4, so this is probably next on my TODO (after I have gotten gawk 5.3.0
> to work).
>
> On Tue, Sep 17, 2024 at 11:18:11PM GMT, arnold@skeeve.com wrote:
> > Although Plan 9 has some version of BWK's awk on it, I'd be
> > curious if you can get gawk running in your extended APE.
> > 
> > Thanks,
> > 
> > Arnold

------------------------------------------
9fans: 9fans
Permalink: https://9fans.topicbox.com/groups/9fans/T399a5d787978799e-Mbe00fcb2cd7b7278ae0c99eb
Delivery options: https://9fans.topicbox.com/groups/9fans/subscription

Re: [9fans] [APExp] which non-9front Plan9 variants are active? (for portability testing)

[Jens Staal]

Great, thanks!

I will update as soon as I get the 5.3.0 working.
(and possibly eliminate some hacks I think was unessecairy in hindsight
(some type mismatch errors that might be suppressed by the -B flag to
the compiler instead of source code changes))

(from the linking errors I think it might be my minimal libintl /
libiconv that are the problem so I will either disable them or port GNU
iconv/gettext to see if that solves it)

On Wed, Sep 18, 2024 at 12:45:16AM GMT, arnold@skeeve.com wrote:
> Thanks for the info.  FYI, just this morning I released gawk 5.3.1;
> it should be on ftp.gnu.org by now. If not, it will be soon.
> 
> Thanks!
> 
> Arnold
> 
> Jens Staal <staal1978@gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> > Yes in fact in the 0.1 release, I am using gawk 4.0.0 (an old port) as
> > default awk.
> >
> > Current "main" branch is broken because I am in the middle of an upgrade
> > to 5.3.0 (I have gotten all the components to compile, but there are
> > some missing components during linking that I need to figure out).
> >
> > I am also using gmake, gsed, flex, byacc (should perhaps try to build
> > bison) as default utilities in APExp.
> >
> > Common issues during configure/make now seems to be related to missing
> > m4, so this is probably next on my TODO (after I have gotten gawk 5.3.0
> > to work).
> >
> > On Tue, Sep 17, 2024 at 11:18:11PM GMT, arnold@skeeve.com wrote:
> > > Although Plan 9 has some version of BWK's awk on it, I'd be
> > > curious if you can get gawk running in your extended APE.
> > > 
> > > Thanks,
> > > 
> > > Arnold

------------------------------------------
9fans: 9fans
Permalink: https://9fans.topicbox.com/groups/9fans/T399a5d787978799e-Madcce445a56d6d408d9f0f01
Delivery options: https://9fans.topicbox.com/groups/9fans/subscription