The "no modify self" variant of Actually Portable Executable is now supported on all platforms. If you use `$(APE_NO_MODIFY_SELF)` then ld.bfd will embed a 4096 byte ELF binary and a 4096 byte Macho file which are installed on the fly to ${TMPDIR:-/tmp}, which enables us launch the executable, without needing to copy the whole executable To prevent it from copying a tiny executable to your temp directory you need to install the `ape` command (renamed from ape-loader), to a system path. For example: # FreeBSD / NetBSD / OpenBSD make -j8 o//ape/ape cp o//ape/ape /usr/bin/ape # Mac OS # make -j8 o//ape/ape.macho curl https://justine.lol/ape.macho >/usr/bin/ape chmod +x /usr/bin/ape On Linux you can get even more performance with the new binfmt_misc support which makes launching non-modifying APE binaries as fast as launching ELF executables. Running the following command: # Linux ape/apeinstall.sh Will copy APE loader to /usr/bin/ape and register with binfmt_misc Lastly, this change also fixes a really interesting race condition with OpenBSD thread joining. |
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.github | ||
.vscode | ||
ape | ||
build | ||
dsp | ||
examples | ||
libc | ||
net | ||
test | ||
third_party | ||
tool | ||
usr/share | ||
.clang-format | ||
.gitattributes | ||
.gitignore | ||
.travis.yml | ||
CONTRIBUTING.md | ||
LICENSE | ||
Makefile | ||
README.md |
Cosmopolitan
Cosmopolitan Libc makes C a build-once run-anywhere language, like Java, except it doesn't need an interpreter or virtual machine. Instead, it reconfigures stock GCC and Clang to output a POSIX-approved polyglot format that runs natively on Linux + Mac + Windows + FreeBSD + OpenBSD + NetBSD + BIOS with the best possible performance and the tiniest footprint imaginable.
Background
For an introduction to this project, please read the αcτµαlly pδrταblε εxεcµταblε blog post and cosmopolitan libc website. We also have API documentation.
Getting Started
If you're doing your development work on Linux or BSD then you need just five files to get started. Here's what you do on Linux:
wget https://justine.lol/cosmopolitan/cosmopolitan.zip
unzip cosmopolitan.zip
printf 'main() { printf("hello world\\n"); }\n' >hello.c
gcc -g -Os -static -nostdlib -nostdinc -fno-pie -no-pie -mno-red-zone \
-fno-omit-frame-pointer -pg -mnop-mcount \
-o hello.com.dbg hello.c -fuse-ld=bfd -Wl,-T,ape.lds \
-include cosmopolitan.h crt.o ape.o cosmopolitan.a
objcopy -S -O binary hello.com.dbg hello.com
You now have a portable program. Please note that your APE binary will assimilate itself as a conventional resident of your platform after the first run, so it can be fast and efficient for subsequent executions.
./hello.com
bash -c './hello.com' # zsh/fish workaround (we upstreamed patches)
So if you intend to copy the binary to Windows or Mac then please do that before you run it, not after.
MacOS
If you're developing on MacOS you can install the GNU compiler collection for x86_64-elf via homebrew:
brew install x86_64-elf-gcc
Then in the above scripts just replace gcc
and objcopy
with
x86_64-elf-gcc
and x86_64-elf-objcopy
to compile your APE binary.
Windows
If you're developing on Windows then you need to download an x86_64-pc-linux-gnu toolchain beforehand. See the Compiling on Windows tutorial. It's needed because the ELF object format is what makes universal binaries possible.
Source Builds
Cosmopolitan can be compiled from source on any Linux distro. GNU make needs to be installed beforehand. This is a freestanding hermetic repository that bootstraps using a vendored static gcc9 executable. No further dependencies are required.
wget https://justine.lol/cosmopolitan/cosmopolitan.tar.gz
tar xf cosmopolitan.tar.gz # see releases page
cd cosmopolitan
make -j16
o//examples/hello.com
find o -name \*.com | xargs ls -rShal | less
GDB
Here's the recommended ~/.gdbinit
config:
set host-charset UTF-8
set target-charset UTF-8
set target-wide-charset UTF-8
set osabi none
set complaints 0
set confirm off
set history save on
set history filename ~/.gdb_history
define asm
layout asm
layout reg
end
define src
layout src
layout reg
end
src
You normally run the .com.dbg
file under gdb. If you need to debug the
.com
file itself, then you can load the debug symbols independently as
gdb foo.com -ex 'add-symbol-file foo.com.dbg 0x401000'
Support Vector
Platform | Min Version | Circa |
---|---|---|
AMD | K8 Venus | 2005 |
Intel | Core | 2006 |
New Technology | Vista | 2006 |
GNU/Systemd | 2.6.18 | 2007 |
XNU's Not UNIX! | 15.6 | 2018 |
FreeBSD | 12 | 2018 |
OpenBSD | 6.4 | 2018 |
NetBSD | 9.1 | 2020 |
GNU Make | 4.0 | 2015 |