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>

                        Linux distribution-related errata

Busybox based distributions need the gawk, gsed, and coreutils packages to build perl.

                  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      file                5.28             C-----

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

Host toolchain      musl                1.1.12           C-IEPU

Host toolchain      perk                HEAD             C-IE--

Host toolchain      pkgconf             0.28             C--E--

Host toolchain      slibtool            0.5.7            C--E--

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-IE-U

Native toolchain    mpfr                3.1.2            C-IE-U

Native toolchain    musl                1.1.12           C-IEPU

Native toolchain    perk                HEAD             C-IE--

Native toolchain    pkgconf             0.28             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--

Runtime components  ptycon              HEAD             C-IE--

3rd party libraries bzip2               1.0.6            C-IE--

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

3rd party libraries expat               2.2.0            C-----

3rd party libraries gdbm                1.12             C-I---

3rd party libraries glib                2.46.2           C-I-P-  Shared object not built

3rd party libraries gzip                1.2.4            C-IE--

3rd party libraries inputproto          2.3.2            C-----

3rd party libraries kbproto             1.0.7            C-----

3rd party libraries libarchive          3.1.2            C-I-P-

3rd party libraries libassuan           2.4.3            C-I---

3rd party libraries libevent            2.0.22-stable    C-I---

3rd party libraries libfetch            2.33             C-I-P-

3rd party libraries libffi              3.2.1            C-I-P-

3rd party libraries libfirm             HEAD             C-I-P-

3rd party libraries libgcrypt           1.7.3            C-I---

3rd party libraries libgpg_error        1.24             C-I-P-

3rd party libraries libICE              1.0.9            C-----

3rd party libraries libksba             1.3.5            C-I-P-

3rd party libraries libpipeline         1.4.1            C-I---

3rd party libraries libpthread-stubs    0.3              C-----

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

3rd party libraries libSM               1.2.2            C-----

3rd party libraries libX11              1.6.3            C-----

3rd party libraries libXau              1.0.8            C-----

3rd party libraries libXaw              1.0.13           C-----

3rd party libraries libXext             1.3.3            C-----

3rd party libraries libxkbfile          1.0.9            C-----

3rd party libraries libXmu              1.1.2            C-----

3rd party libraries libXpm              3.5.11           C-----

3rd party libraries libXt               1.1.5            C-----

3rd party libraries libz                1.2.8.2015.05.20 C-I---

3rd party libraries lua                 5.3.3            C---P-

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

3rd party libraries npth                1.2              C-I---

3rd party libraries pcre                8.39             C-I---

3rd party libraries renderproto         0.11.1           C-----

3rd party libraries xcb                 1.12             C-----  Needs pthreads / clone(2)

3rd party libraries xcb-proto           1.12             C-----

3rd party libraries xextproto           7.3.0            C-----

3rd party libraries xproto              7.0.29           C-----

3rd party libraries Xrender             0.9.9            C-----

3rd party libraries xtrans              1.1              C-----

3rd party libraries xz                  5.2.2            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  coreutils           8.23             C---P-  Needs extensive testing

3rd party packages  cparser             HEAD             C-I-P-

3rd party packages  cron                HEAD             C---P-

3rd party packages  dash                0.5.8            C-----  Provides /bin/sh

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

3rd party packages  dos2unix            7.3.4            C-----

3rd party packages  ed                  1.13             C-----

3rd party packages  file                5.28             C-----

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

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

3rd party packages  git                 2.7.1            C-----  Needs clone(2)

3rd party packages  gnupg               2.1.15           C-----  Needs /dev/[u]random, extensive testing

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

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

3rd party packages  htop                2.0.1            C-I-P-  Linked against ncursesw

3rd party packages  inetutils           1.9.4            C-----

3rd party packages  infounzip           6.0              C-----

3rd party packages  infozip             3.0              C-----

3rd party packages  irssi               0.8.18           CB--P-  DNS and /EXEC require clone(2) due to pthreads (see psxscl;) no Perl support

3rd party packages  john                1.8.0            C---P-

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

3rd party packages  lynx                2.8.8rel2        C-----

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

3rd party packages  man_db              2.7.5            C-----

3rd party packages  mc                  4.8.17           C-----

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

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

3rd party packages  netcat              110              C---P-

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

3rd party packages  p7zip               HEAD             C-----

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

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

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

3rd party packages  procps-ng           3.3.12           C-----

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

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

3rd party packages  rxvt-unicode        9.22             C-I---  No Perl support

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

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

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

3rd party packages  the silver searcher 0.32.0           C-----

3rd party packages  tmux                2.2              C---P-

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

3rd party packages  vim                 7.4.1952         C-----  Provides /bin/vi

3rd party packages  weechat             1.6              C-----

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

3rd party packages  whois               5.2.12           C-----

3rd party packages  xeyes               1.1.1            C-I---

3rd party packages  xwd                 1.0.6            C-I---

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

                  Midipix roadmap/TODO list

                   Last update: Fri, 03 Jun 2016 12:47:13 +0000

midipix alpha release: the final stretch

========================================

my.own.tasks@midipix.org

------------------------

* ofd tables: additional bucket allocation as needed.

* `ls -R //c`: check for the cause of individual failures.

  (might be related to the above ofd bucket allocation).

* integrate clone and the initial ldso implementation.

* integrate the signal queue, check signal implementation for

  semantic completion, especially in the context of multi-threaded

  applications.

* implement /dev/random and /dev/urandom, as well as other virtual

  folders needed by core applications.

* implement the scheduler functions.

* implement (possibly as stubs) missing system calls, fix existing

  system calls as needed by the core applications.

* toolchain: provided the few interfaces missing for C++ support.

* porting of mintty.

porting and other release-related tasks

---------------------------------------

* testing of ncurses.

* testing of bash and dash when built with ncurses.

* testing of all of the coreutils, seeing which ones fail due to

  a missing virtual file or folder, which ones fail due to a missing

  system call (crash), and which ones fail due to an incomplete or

  incorrect system call.

* porting of gdb.

vim:expandtab sw=8 ts=8 tw=0 nowrap