[HN Gopher] Redbean: Actually Portable Executable Web Server [vi...
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       Redbean: Actually Portable Executable Web Server [video]
        
       Author : feross
       Score  : 67 points
       Date   : 2021-05-25 03:53 UTC (1 days ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (www.youtube.com)
 (TXT) w3m dump (www.youtube.com)
        
       | [deleted]
        
       | SPascareli13 wrote:
       | Not to be confused with RedbeanPHP.
        
         | teddyh wrote:
         | Nor with "Red Bean Software" <https://red-bean.com/about.html>.
        
           | tssva wrote:
           | Nor with "Red Beans and Rice"
           | <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_beans_and_rice>
        
       | 1vuio0pswjnm7 wrote:
       | Kinda sad to hear that small, offline programs to run on various
       | OS was viewed as some sort of challenging problem for Google (or
       | anyone). Offiline interoperability was intentionally made
       | difficult. Too many people, many of whom do not know the history,
       | are just way off-track. IMO, this project should not be called
       | "mad science". It should be standard procedure and what many
       | people are working on. Small, portable, fast, resource-efficient,
       | offline programs. Instead they are working on all the
       | monstrosities that she mentions. God bless her for admitting how
       | slow Python is by comparison. And how large Go binaries are. She
       | says she studied "old code" to make her discoveries. For years I
       | have believed this is what is takes to make progress and I avoid
       | all the "new" stuff that gets incessantly promoted to today's
       | developers. IMO, no one "forgot" the things she discovered,
       | others are just constantly trying to bury them. Outside of HN, as
       | well as on HN, there is strong distaste for anything "old".
       | Instead of being thankful for what we have to build on, that has
       | withstood the test of time, I see steady resentment for it
       | because it is not "modern". This "modern" stuff is all throwaway,
       | it is not built-to-last.
       | 
       | When salaries are paid by advertising, then the only content that
       | matters is "popular" content. Unpopular stuff is not valued. That
       | includes unpopular even though technically superior technology.
        
         | 1vuio0pswjnm7 wrote:
         | What gives me pause about this project is the author's apparent
         | satisfaction with having a Linux-only development environment.
         | With all the portability techniques discovered, portable
         | Makefiles and a portable build system seems to have been
         | ignored. NetBSD's toolchain and NetBSD itself can be built on a
         | variety of OS. Yet this library can only be built on Linux.
         | That does not sound right. Only supporting "NetBSD 9.1" when
         | the code for older kernels is so easily available is also a bit
         | odd.
        
           | BBC-vs-neolibs wrote:
           | A port of a compiler, for instance TCC, seems to be the next
           | logical step. TCC could be a portable executable.
        
           | dundarious wrote:
           | A lot of impressive and intricate work has gone into getting
           | their project to this stage. I think especially something
           | like only supporting running on NetBSD >= 9.1 can be
           | forgiven, but even the build OS requirements seem quite
           | justified for now (Linux, macOS, and Windows supported, the
           | latter two require the GCC ELF toolchain though).
        
           | jart wrote:
           | Author here. The Apple and Microsoft linkers make that
           | difficult. The GNU and LLVM compilers usually choose to
           | conform to those difficult conventions when compiled for
           | those platforms. You can help us fix that, because we're
           | working on chibicc, which is like TCC but 10x better. https:/
           | /github.com/jart/cosmopolitan/blob/master/third_party... It's
           | not there yet. It can be built as an actually portable
           | executable. I already wrote an assembler for it. Soon we'll
           | have a C linker for it too, and thus a whole toolchain in one
           | file. The tradeoff is it doesn't optimize. But it supports
           | C11 and most GNU extensions. So when we're OK having velocity
           | in development anywhere with code that only goes half as
           | fast, but compiles 5x as fast, this will be the way to go.
        
         | pxc wrote:
         | The history you mention sounds pretty interesting to me. Where
         | can/should I read (or hear) about it?
        
       | d136o wrote:
       | mad science
        
       | kickscondor wrote:
       | Amazing! I loved seeing the binary dump slides of the executable
       | headers and ZIP portions narrated. This is the true hacker spirit
       | incarnate.
        
       | dang wrote:
       | Some related past discussions:
       | 
       |  _Redbean 0.4_ - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27001961 -
       | May 2021 (13 comments)
       | 
       |  _Cosmopolitan Libc: your build-once run-anywhere C library_ -
       | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26277521 - Feb 2021 (11
       | comments)
       | 
       |  _Actually Portable Executable_ -
       | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26273960 - Feb 2021 (162
       | comments)
       | 
       |  _Show HN: Redbean - Single-file distributable web server_ -
       | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26271117 - Feb 2021 (249
       | comments)
       | 
       |  _How Fat Does a Fat Binary Need to Be?_ -
       | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26103769 - Feb 2021 (67
       | comments)
       | 
       |  _Cosmopolitan Libc: build-once run-anywhere C library_ -
       | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25556286 - Dec 2020 (166
       | comments)
       | 
       |  _actually pdrtable executable_ -
       | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24256883 - Aug 2020 (286
       | comments)
        
         | capableweb wrote:
         | Do you keep something like topic pages in your personal wiki or
         | how do you keep track of these? Just really quick and efficient
         | searching when you remember something has been discussed
         | before? Maybe even some Google Chrome extension to insert story
         | title + link + date + # of comments from submission links into
         | the comment field?
        
           | dang wrote:
           | Nope, I just use HN search (hn.algolia.com) but I have
           | software that makes it faster and does the formatting - yes,
           | it's a browser extension that I've been using for moderation
           | and adding to for, gosh, coming up on 9 years this fall. See
           | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27236708 and the other
           | links there for more information if interested.
           | 
           | I'm going to make it so any HN links to past threads will
           | render as "title - link - month-year - # of comments" or
           | something similar.
           | 
           | One of these years I'll publish the browser extension too,
           | and the Arc-over-JS implementation it's written in.
        
         | dingdingdang wrote:
         | I came into this thread thinking I was going to cross-post the
         | earlier Cosmopolitan/APE related posts, but dang, someone beat
         | me to it, both on the username AND content front?! Thanks
         | though, saved me quite bit of googling.
        
           | nighthawk454 wrote:
           | dang is an admin here on HN :) often when there's been
           | significant past discussions, you'll find these posts up top.
           | quite helpful!
        
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       (page generated 2021-05-26 23:02 UTC)