Obtaining and installing a Midipix distribution

                   Last update: Sun, 24 Apr 2016 09:42:40 +0000

A Midipix distribution consists of the following:

a) the native Midipix toolchain, consisting of perk, gcc, its dependencies,

   and binutils,

b) musl, a lightweight, fast, simple, and free libc[1] used by Midipix,

c) the Midipix runtime components that bridge the gap between the libc and the

   executive subsystems of all Windows NT-derived Windows OS starting with and

   including Windows XP, and

d) a steadily increasing number of 3rd party open source packages, as expected in

   any modern POSIX-compliant *nix environment, including GNU coreutils, shells,

   libraries such as ncurses, libressl, as well as Perl and Python.

Compressed Midipix distribution tarballs and, separately, source tarballs are,

at present, produced every four (4) hours UTC after each successful build and

subsequently signed. This process is fully automated by a portable Bourne shell

script; all of the above mentioned components are cross-compiled.

Thus, the most hassle-free way to get started with Midipix is to simply download

the most recent distribution tarball and follow the instructions below. It is,

however, recommended to anyone intending to use Midipix as a development platform

to familiarise themselves with the build process. Other reasons to prefer building

a Midipix distribution yourself include integrating new 3rd party software or local

runtime component patches. At present, a full build from scratch takes about 30

(thirty) minutes to finish on an 8-core host with eight simultaneous make jobs,

minus the generation of the tarballs. The build script can be obtained from the

following GitHub repository: <https://github.com/lalbornoz/midipix_build>.

If you obtained a Midipix distribution tarball, extract it into a directory and

drive of your choice, henceforth referred to as target directory; the drive can

be a network drive. Do _not_ use anything but a true UNIX environment tar(1), as

e.g. WinRAR or WinZip handle extracting hard links incorrectly.

If you built Midipix yourself, the target directory is equivalent to the ${PREFIX}

configured in build.vars, which defaults to ${HOME}/midipix.

At present, providing an interactive Midipix environment still requires the Cygwin

terminal emulator Mintty and a shell; this does not include pseudoterminals, which

are entirely handled by Midipix. Both can be installed via the 64-bit Cygwin setup

program at <https://www.cygwin.com/setup-x86_64.exe>.

Once installed, launching a Midipix shell is accomplished by the `midipix.sh' shell

script provided in the target directory from within a Cygwin shell prompt in Mintty

and the target directory. This may either simply be done manually each time, or

automated by a shortcut. As shortcuts cannot be distributed, it can be created by

either:

a) Opening (executing) the VBScript script in the target directory from within the

   latter cscript.exe, providing the fully qualified pathname to Mintty, if it differs

   from the default value of C:\cygwin64\bin\mintty.exe or

b) manually creating a shortcut to Mintty with `Start in:' set to the target directory

   and the following command line:

   [ ... ]\mintty.exe -i /Cygwin-Terminal.ico -e sh midipix.sh, or

References:

Sun, 24 Apr 2016 09:04:08 +0000 [1] musl FAQ <http://www.musl-libc.org/faq.html>

                  Midipix status report

                   Last update: Tue, 26 Apr 2016 10:16:16 +0000

The following build status codes are defined:

C -- Complete build w/ at least the default configuration,

B -- Broken, e.g. doesn't work at all or only minimally,

I -- Integrated (e.g. linked against) with other packages,

E -- Extensively tested and confirmed to work by multiple sources, possibly via a testsuite,

P -- Patches needed to build that haven't been committed upstream yet, and

U -- Update to latest stable version or HEAD pending.

Component type      Name        Version           Status  Comments

Host toolchain      binutils    2.24.51           C--EPU

Host toolchain      gcc         4.6.4             ---EPU  Excludes libstdc++

Host toolchain      musl        1.1.12            C-IEPU

Native toolchain    binutils    2.24.51           C--EPU

Native toolchain    gcc         4.6.4             ---EPU  Excludes libstdc++

Native toolchain    gmp         5.1.3             C-IEPU

Native toolchain    libelf      0.8.13            C-IEP-

Native toolchain    mpc         1.0.1             C-IEPU

Native toolchain    mpfr        3.1.2             C-IEPU

Native toolchain    musl        1.1.12            C-IEPU

Native toolchain    perk        HEAD              C-IE--

Runtime components  dalist      HEAD              C-IE--

Runtime components  ntapi       HEAD              C-IE--

Runtime components  ntcon       HEAD              C-IE--

Runtime components  ntctty      HEAD              C-IE--

Runtime components  pemagine    HEAD              C-IE--

Runtime components  psxscl      HEAD              C-IE--  Excludes clone(2) and dlopen(3)

Runtime components  psxtypes    HEAD              C-IE--

3rd party packages  apk_tools   2.6.6             C---P-

3rd party packages  bash        4.3               C-I-P-  Linked against ncursesw

3rd party packages  bzip2       1.0.6             C-----

3rd party packages  coreutils   8.23              C---P-  Needs extensive testing

3rd party packages  curl        7.47.1            C---P-

3rd party packages  dash        0.5.8             C---P-

3rd party packages  diffutils   3.3               C---P-

3rd party packages  findutils   4.5.14            C---P-

3rd party packages  gawk        4.1.3             C---P-

3rd party packages  git         2.7.1             C-----

3rd party packages  glib        2.46.2            C---P-

3rd party packages  grep        2.22              C---P-

3rd party packages  gzip        1.2.4             C-----

3rd party packages  hexcurse    1.60.0            C-I-P-  Linked against ncursesw

3rd party packages  irssi       0.8.18            CB--P-  DNS requires clone(2) due to pthreads (see psxscl)

3rd party packages  less        481               C-I---  Linked against ncursesw

3rd party packages  libarchive  3.1.2             C---P-

3rd party packages  libfetch    2.33              C---P-

3rd party packages  libffi      3.2.1             C---P-

3rd party packages  libressl    2.2.6             C-I-P-

3rd party packages  libz        1.2.8.2015.05.20  C-----

3rd party packages  make        3.81              C---P-

3rd party packages  mksh        R52c              C---P-

3rd party packages  nano        2.5.3             C-I-P-  Linked against ncursesw

3rd party packages  ncurses     6.0               C-IEP-  ncurses, ncursestw, and ncursesw built

3rd party packages  openssh     7.1p2             C-I-P-  Linked against libressl

3rd party packages  pacman      5.0.1             C-----

3rd party packages  patch       2.7               C---P-

3rd party packages  perl        5.22.1            ----P-  No dlopen(3) (see psxscl,) modules missing

3rd party packages  python      3.5.1             -B--P-  No dlopen(3) (see psxscl,) modules missing

3rd party packages  rsync       3.1.2             C---P-

3rd party packages  sed         4.2.2             C---P-

3rd party packages  tar         1.28              C---P-

3rd party packages  tcsh        6.19.00           C-I-P-

3rd party packages  util_linux  2.27.1            C---P-  Needs extensive testing

3rd party packages  which       2.21              C-----

3rd party packages  xz          5.2.2             C---P-

3rd party packages  zsh         5.2               C-I-P-  Linked against ncursesw

                  Midipix roadmap/TODO list

                   Last update: Tue, 26 Apr 2016 10:41:37 +0000

1) slibtool,

2) psxscl: clone(2) system call implementation.

   This is required by all 3rd party packages that make use of threads such as Irssi.

3) psxscl: dlopen(3) system call implementation.

   This is required by all 3rd party packages that have runtime modules such as Perl and Python.

4) gdb: native port,

5) [ ... ]

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