N.B. If you're interested in building Midipix using this script, please join the project's IRC channel #midipix on Freenode and ask for the address of the internal repositories required in order to build Midipix.

Table of Contents

1. What is midipix, and how is it different?
2. Building a midipix distribution
   2.1. Build-time dependencies
   2.1.1. Alpine-specific notate bene
   2.2. Deployment
   2.3. System requirements
3. Common tasks
   3.1. Fault-tolerant & highly optimised 3D laser show-equipped usage screen
4. Build variables
   4.1. Package variables
5. References

1. What is midipix, and how is it different?

midipix is a development environment that lets you create programs for Windows using the standard C and POSIX APIs. No compromises made, no shortcuts taken.

If you are interested in cross-platform programming that reclaims the notion of write once, compile everywhere; if you believe that the 'standard' in the C Standard Library should not be a null signifier; and if you like cooking your code without #ifdef hell and low-level minutiae, then this page is for you.

midipix makes cross-platform programming better, simpler and faster, specifically by bringing a modern, conforming C Runtime Library to the Windows platform. While the idea itself is not new, the approach taken in midipix to code portability is radically different from that found in other projects.

(reproduced from [3])

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2. Building a midipix distribution

A Midipix distribution consists of the following: * the native Midipix toolchain, consisting of perk, gcc, its dependencies, and binutils, * musl, a lightweight, fast, simple, and free libc[1] used by Midipix, * 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 * 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.

Install the build-time dependencies listed in section 2.1, clone this repository, and run the following command line:

./build.sh -a nt64 -b release -P -v

By default, the build will take place within ${HOME}/midipix/nt64/release and package archive files and/or Git repositores will be downloaded into ${HOME}/midipix/dlcache. Consult sections 3.1, 4, and 4.1 for the list of available build variables and how to override them.
Parallelisation is enabled by the above command line for both packages that can be built independently of each other and make(1) child processes via -j, limited to the amount of logical processors on the build host divided by two (2).

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2.1. Build-time dependencies

• Alpine Linux: binutils bzip2 cmake coreutils curl findutils g++ gawk gcc git grep gzip libc-dev linux-headers lzip make musl-dev net-tools patch perl perl-xml-parser procps sed tar util-linux wget xz zip
• Debian/-derived Linux: binutils bzip2 clzip cmake coreutils curl findutils g++ gawk gcc git grep gzip hostname libc6-dev libxml-parser-perl lzma make patch perl procps sed tar util-linux wget xz-utils zip
• OpenSUSE Linux: binutils bzip2 cmake coreutils curl findutils gawk gcc gcc-c++ git grep gzip hostname linux-glibc-devel lzip make patch perl perl-XML-Parser procps sed tar util-linux wget xz zip

N.B. Busybox is not supported.

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2.1.1. Alpine-specific notate bene

Some packages (coreutils, grep, and tar, among others) override Alpine's BusyBox utilities of the same name, as the latter are either non-conformant or defective.

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2.2. Deployment

On successful completion of the build, a ZIP archive containing the Midipix distribution will be created. Extract its contents on the target machine, run bash.bat, and then /install.sh inside the resulting self-contained Midipix installation shell window.

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2.3. System requirements

The following system requirements are assessed on build hosts equipped with the following hardware at minimum: * Intel(R) Xeon(R) CPU W3520 @ 2.67GHz (8 cores) * 7200 RPM SATA 3.1 HDD * 6 GB RAM

Package archive files and/or Git repositories additionally consume at least 1.70 GB.

(last update: Wed, 04 Mar 2020 14:07:26 +0000)

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3. Common tasks

Rebuild set of packages in isolation, along w/ their dependencies, if any, as needed, or forcibly, respectively:

./build.sh [ ... ] -r mc,zsh
./build.sh [ ... ] -r \*mc,zsh
./build.sh [ ... ] -r \*\*mc,zsh

Restart the configure, build, and install steps of the coreutils package.

./build.sh -r coreutils:configure,build,install

Rebuild entire build group:

./build.sh [ ... ] -r ALL native_runtime

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3.1. Fault-tolerant & highly optimised 3D laser show-equipped usage screen

usage: ./build.sh [-a nt32|nt64] [-b debug|release] [-C dir[,..]] [-D kind[,..]] [-F ipv4|ipv6|offline]
                  [-h] [-p jobs] [-P] [-r [*[*]]ALL|LAST|name[,..][:step,..]] [-R] [-v[v[v[v]]]]
                  [--as-needed] [--debug-minipix] [<group>[ ..]]

        -a nt32|nt64      Selects 32-bit or 64-bit architecture; defaults to nt64.
        -b debug|release  Selects debug or release build; defaults to debug.
        -C dir[,..]       Clean build directory (build,) ${PREFIX} before processing build
                          scripts (prefix,) source directory (src,) and/or destination directory
                          (dest) after successful package builds.
        -D kind[,..]      Produce minimal midipix distribution directory (minipix,) RPM binary
                          packages (rpm,) and/or deployable distribution ZIP archive (zipdist.)
                          zipdist implies minipix.
        -F ipv4|ipv6|offline
                          Force IPv4 (ipv4) or IPv6 (ipv6) when downloading package archives
                          and/or Git repositories or don't download either at all (offline.)
        -h                Show this screen.
        -p jobs           Enables parallelisation at group-level, whenever applicable.
        -P                The maximum count of jobs defaults to the number of logical
                          processors on the host system divided by two (2.)
                          If -R is not specified and at least one (1) package fails to build,
                          all remaining package builds will be forcibly aborted for convenience.
        -r [*[*]]ALL[:step,..]|LAST|name[,..][:step,..]
                          Restart all packages/the specified comma-separated package(s)
                          completely or at optionally specified comma-separated step(s)
                          or restart the last failed package and resume build.
                          Prepend w/ `*' to automatically include dependencies and `**' to
                          forcibly rebuild all dependencies.

                          Currently defined steps are:
                          fetch_wget, fetch_git, fetch_extract,
                          configure_patch_pre, configure_autotools, configure_patch, configure,
                          build,
                          install_subdirs, install_make, install_files, install_libs, install, and install_rpm.
        -R                Ignore build failures, skip printing package logs, and continue
                          building (relaxed mode.)
        -v[v[v[v]]]       Be verbose; -vv: always print package logs; -vvv: set xtrace during package builds; -vvvv: logs fileops.
        --as-needed       Don't build unless the midipix_build repository has received new commits.
        --debug-minipix   Don't strip(1) minipix binaries to facilitate debugging minipix.
        <group>[ ..]      One of: dev_packages, dist, host_deps, host_deps_rpm, host_toolchain,
                          host_tools, minipix, native_packages, native_runtime, native_toolchain,
                          native_tools.

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4. Build variables

The following variables are primarily defined in midipix.env and may be overriden on a per-build basis on the command-line after the last argument, if any, e.g.:

./build.sh -a nt64 -b release -D minipix,zipdist -P -v PREFIX_ROOT="${HOME}/midipix_tmp"

Furthermore, ${HOME}/midipix_build.vars, ${HOME}/.midipix_build.vars, and/or ../midipix_build.vars are sourced during build initialisation and may contain additional overrides, particularly ${DEFAULT_GITROOT_HEAD}.

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4.1. Package variables

The following variables are package-specific and receive their value from either top-level defaults defined in midipix.env, build group-specific defaults from the build group the package pertains to and defined in its corresponding file beneath groups/, or package-specific overrides defined either in the latter and/or in its corresponding file beneath vars/. Additionally, overrides may be specified on a per-build basis on the command-line after the last argument, with each variable prefixed w/ PKG_, e.g.: ./build.sh [ ... ] PKG_ZSH_CC="/bin/false".

The minimum set of package variables that must be provided is SHA256SUM, URL, VERSION and/or URLS_GIT, respectively.

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5. References

• Sun, 25 Apr 2016 09:04:08 +0000 [1] musl FAQ
• Wed, 04 Mar 2020 12:57:39 +0000 [2] midipix
• Wed, 04 Mar 2020 13:36:19 +0000 [3] midipix - what is midipix, and how is it different?

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