GSoC Status Report 3

content/news/gsoc-self-hosting-3.md

++++
+title = "GSoC Project: Making Redox Self-hosting, Status Report 3"
+author = "ids1024"
+date = "2017-07-24T15:42:51-07:00"
++++
+
+This is a continuation of [status report 1](/news/gsoc-self-hosting-1/) and [status report 2](/news/gsoc-self-hosting-2/).
+
+# Git
+
+Git is now more or less working in Redox. This primarily required fixing a variety of bugs and Posix incompatibilities, primarily in newlib and redoxfs. Newlib wasn't passing environmental variables on exec; I've [fixed that](https://github.com/redox-os/newlib/pull/45) although there are still some improvements to make in that area. Redoxfs wasn't matching Posix for permissions handing on [file creation](https://github.com/redox-os/redoxfs/pull/25) and [unlink](https://github.com/redox-os/redoxfs/pull/26). There was a small bug in [getcwd](https://github.com/redox-os/newlib/pull/47), and a kernel issue with [dup2](https://github.com/redox-os/kernel/pull/34) as well as [cloexec handling](https://github.com/redox-os/kernel/pull/37). For some reason the default SHA1 implementation in git wasn't working; I'm not sure why, but [overriding it](https://github.com/redox-os/cookbook/pull/51) addresses that for now. Redoxfs's [fcntl](https://github.com/redox-os/redoxfs/pull/24) function was misbehaving, so I fixed that. Newlib defined [`tv_nsec`](https://github.com/redox-os/newlib/pull/44) with the wrong type; that was hard to debug since, given that it was running on a little endian machine and happened to start as zero, it seemed to behave correctly in tests.
+
+<img class="img-responsive" src="/img/screenshot/redox-git.png"/>
+
+It seems to be working fairly well, if you can ignore the warnings about newlib functions that aren't properly implemented yet.
+
+# Building C software
+
+It was already possible to build simple things like Lua under Redox (since I ported gcc, make, and dash), but more complex software has some issues. I am currently struggling with getting autotools based builds to work on Redox (warning: trying to read and understand a ./configure script may cause mental illness). I've gotten a configure to run and generate a Makefile; the build doesn't complete successfully yet though. I've been working with GNU binutils specifically, but it should apply equally to other software using autotools.
+
+<img class="img-responsive" src="/img/screenshot/redox-configure.png"/>
+
+I've ported [gawk](https://github.com/redox-os/cookbook/pull/46) and [sed](https://github.com/redox-os/cookbook/pull/48) to Redox, as well as [GNU grep](https://github.com/redox-os/cookbook/pull/52). Autotools uses a [#! with a space](https://github.com/redox-os/kernel/pull/32), for some reason. I also addressed [a few issues](https://github.com/redox-os/dash/pull/2) in dash.
+
+I've implemented [dirname](https://github.com/redox-os/coreutils/pull/166), added a ['-f' argument](https://github.com/redox-os/coreutils/pull/164) to rm, and fixed [directory support](https://github.com/redox-os/coreutils/pull/170). I [added fcntl](https://github.com/redox-os/newlib/pull/40) to newlib, and added a [-v argument](https://github.com/redox-os/extrautils/pull/24) and [-c argument](https://github.com/redox-os/extrautils/pull/25) to grep. I also added [octal support](https://github.com/redox-os/coreutils/pull/174) to tr. Cat with a - argument wasn't working due to an [arg-parser](https://github.com/redox-os/arg-parser/pull/1) issue.
+
+I added [uname](https://github.com/redox-os/kernel/pull/39) to the sys scheme, and a [uname utility](https://github.com/redox-os/coreutils/pull/172) to coreutils.
+
+I've been using expr from uutils (a Rust implementation of coreutils), since Redox's coreutils doesn't provide that currently. Redox should use uutils utilities for that and more; I've [patched chmod](https://github.com/uutils/coreutils/pull/1054) from uutils to run on Redox, and submitted a PR upstream. I intend to look into making Redox use portions or uutils by default where suitable.
+
+I've looked into porting Perl (which would be needed to run autotools itself). Perl is awkward to cross compile though, and there are still some issues, so that isn't available yet.
+
+# Upstreaming
+
+I've upstreamed Redox support to [filetime](https://github.com/alexcrichton/filetime/pull/8) and [tar-rs](https://github.com/alexcrichton/tar-rs/pull/120), which are used in cargo and generally useful (redox's tar command uses tar-rs). Cmake-rs required a [small fix](https://github.com/alexcrichton/cmake-rs/pull/35) to target Redox.
+
+# Other libc functions
+
+I've implemented [`getpwnam` and `getpwid`](https://github.com/redox-os/newlib/pull/38), as well as [`utime`, `utimes`, and `futimes()`](https://github.com/redox-os/newlib/pull/39).