World: r3wp

(Must write a cheer bot one of these days)

hehe :-)

Silly question (I'm not in the loop), why was View necessary? Feel 
free to point to a blog post or something that explains it.

because we used struct! quite heavily

which (still) is not available in /core

ok, interesting.

the binary emitters (PE, ELF) need to adhere to the respective format 
specification, which is usually supplanted with C struct definitions. 
the primary issue is that C structs have particular (platform-specific) 
memory layout rules, which REBOL's struct! mimicks.

for example a struct of an 8-bit char! and a 32-bit integer! takes 
up not 40-bits but actually 64-bits in size (due to alignment constraints, 
in this case).

so this is one of the challenges that are required to solve, when 
creating a new binary emitter?

when writing a new emitter, the "challenge" is mostly the rather 
tedious task os transliterating C structs into REBOL struct!s

Have a look at the current ELF/PE emitters, for example:

https://github.com/dockimbel/Red/blob/master/red-system/formats/ELF.r#L87

https://github.com/dockimbel/Red/blob/master/red-system/formats/PE.r#L145

For comparison, that's the spec of the ELF "Ehdr" struct:
http://sco.com/developers/gabi/latest/ch4.eheader.html

REBOL/Core 2.7.8 doesn't run on FreeBSD8.2, it requires libm.so.4 
(FreeBSD 4)...

# ln /lib/libm.so.5 /lib/libm.so.4
# rebol

/libexec/ld-elf.so.1: Shared object "libc.so.6" not found, required 
by "rebol"

Getting /Core to run on FreeBSD looks like a real challenge :-)

Aren't there "compat" libraries for FreeBSD 4 etc. backwards compatibility?

Yes, but it requires me to install a lot of stuff...The real issue 
is that /Core is built on obsolete libraries version.

I know, but all operating systems should deal with backwards compatibility, 
and the Unixes usually do it with optional packages that you need 
to install

hmm, /core 2.7.8 runs fine for me on freebsd 8.2

let's see where those ancient libm/libc versions come from :)

compat6x-amd64-6.4.604000.200810_3 :)

So the compatibilty base seems to be FreeBSD 6

I tried: pkg_add -r compat6x-amd64 from http://www.freshports.org/misc/compat6x, 
but keep getting "unable to fetch messages".

Did I miss something?

are you on an amd64 system?

Are you on AMD64?

:-)

on Vmware

I guess it emulates an Intel CPU

uname -m ?

i386

works

should be just `pkg_add -r compat6x` then

thanks!

(or -i386 :)

nope, add to append -i386 :)

add => had

solves REBOL issues

Let see now if the compiler is running

hm, automatic creation of the builds/ folder bugs

Can you push a fix for that? (I'm cooking at the same time)

yep, will do

# builds/hello 
ELF binary type "0" not known.
builds/hello: Exec format error. Binary file not executable.

Have you pushed your BSD-specific ELF fixes or does it require a 
proper target config?

I think FreeBSD's ID is somewhere around 5

nope, i didn't push the freebsd emitter hack mainline

that just hardcoded freebsd-specifics, so would have broke linux 
in that form. only a quick experiment to see what's really necessary

Could you parametrized those BSD-specific changes with a compiler 
option?

Kaj: SIZE? has been extended to work with datatypes and aliases.

Thanks! That will make my struct allocations less haphazard