[Nickle] Mint and FreeBSD

[James LaMar]

Hey everyone,

  I just wanted to give everyone an update -- I'm reworking the guts of
  Mint (the parser generator) and so, while I'm working on it I'm going
  to be taking it offline while I straighten out the API and such. 
  There's a lot of things about it I didn't like -- so I'm making
  radical changes and don't want anyone writing software against the
  first version.  I've updated the mint webpage accordingly and there's
  a (somewhat scanty) design document available for review.

  Also, this might be a noteworthy issue -- nickle on FreeBSD-5.3 (BETA)
  seems to cause frequent and nondeterministic bus errors.  Even
  something as simple as running nickle and immediately hitting
  Control-D (with the latest snapshot) causes a bus error:

tachikoma:~/prj/mintpage> nickle
> 
Bus error (core dumped)

tachikoma:~/prj/mintpage> gdb /pkg/bin/nickle nickle.core 
GNU gdb 6.1.1 [FreeBSD]
Copyright 2004 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
GDB is free software, covered by the GNU General Public License, and you
are
welcome to change it and/or distribute copies of it under certain
conditions.
Type "show copying" to see the conditions.
There is absolutely no warranty for GDB.  Type "show warranty" for
details.
This GDB was configured as "i386-marcel-freebsd"...
Program terminated with signal 10, Bus error.
Reading symbols from /lib/libm.so.2...done.
Loaded symbols for /lib/libm.so.2
Reading symbols from /lib/libreadline.so.4...done.
Loaded symbols for /lib/libreadline.so.4
Reading symbols from /lib/libncurses.so.5...done.
Loaded symbols for /lib/libncurses.so.5
Reading symbols from /lib/libc.so.5...done.
Loaded symbols for /lib/libc.so.5
Reading symbols from /libexec/ld-elf.so.1...done.
Loaded symbols for /libexec/ld-elf.so.1
#0  MemReference (object=0xd0d0d0d0) at mem.c:251
251         if (!isReferenced (object))
(gdb) backtrace
#0  MemReference (object=0xd0d0d0d0) at mem.c:251
#1  0x0805ed7e in MarkBuiltinCode (object=0x80ac108) at func.c:81
#2  0x0805eef2 in FuncMark (object=0x80a7538) at func.c:114
#3  0x0804afa3 in BoxMark (object=0x80a7518) at box.c:26
#4  0x0806d17a in NamelistMark (object=0x80a7578) at scope.c:41
#5  0x0806d17a in NamelistMark (object=0x80a75b8) at scope.c:41
#6  0x0806d17a in NamelistMark (object=0x80a7608) at scope.c:41
#7  0x0806d17a in NamelistMark (object=0x80a7648) at scope.c:41
#8  0x0806d17a in NamelistMark (object=0x80a7698) at scope.c:41
#9  0x0806d17a in NamelistMark (object=0x80a76e8) at scope.c:41
#10 0x0806d17a in NamelistMark (object=0x80a7738) at scope.c:41
#11 0x0806d17a in NamelistMark (object=0x80a7778) at scope.c:41
#12 0x0806d17a in NamelistMark (object=0x80a77c8) at scope.c:41
#13 0x0806d17a in NamelistMark (object=0x80a7808) at scope.c:41
#14 0x0806d17a in NamelistMark (object=0x80a7848) at scope.c:41
#15 0x0806d17a in NamelistMark (object=0x80a7888) at scope.c:41
#16 0x0806d17a in NamelistMark (object=0x80a78d8) at scope.c:41
#17 0x0806d17a in NamelistMark (object=0x80a7928) at scope.c:41
...


I don't know if this is because it's a beta version of FreeBSD -- but I
saw a token few other reports of bus errors under FreeBSD when I was
searching for clues.  It's odd because I have always been able to run it
under (beta) versions of NetBSD as well.  I might try using it in
5.2-STABLE and see how things go.

-- 
  James
  giantrobot at f-m.fm