Helping a noob getting inferno-os to compile on modern Linux (nixos)

[Charles Langlois]

Hi.

Been interested in Plan 9 & inferno os for a while. Been rediscovering those wonders recently.

So now I'm trying to get inferno os emulator to compile on my nixos (Linux, 64 bit) machine.

I'm pretty much a noob at low-level / system programming / C stuff (I'm a python developer), trying to learn and get better.

Not sure when's the last time someone got inferno emulator to compile on a "modern" system? 

I'm trying to setup a working build environment (using nix to pull in the right dependencies), but getting all kinds of compile / linking errors, mostly missing includes (undeclared functions).
Can't help but think my environment is not setup properly, either I'm not using the right packages or not setting the right CFLAGS or LD environment or something similar? 

Tried building the Dockerfile as well, also doesn't work.

Tweaked some configs and added missing includes in some files, got emu to build but it segfaults on run so I'm not there yet.

If someone got it to build and run on a linux system recently, advice would be appreciated.

Thanks all, hope this project continues to survive and keep inspiring similar ones!

[Caerwyn Jones]

Hi Charles,

I recommend using the inferno64 fork at https://github.com/caerwynj/inferno64. I build and use it regularly.

There is also a MinGW branch for running on Windows and a Termux branch that I use for building on Android.

Best regards,
Caerwyn Jones

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[Charles Langlois]

Hi Caerwynj, thanks for the heads up, I'll try this out.

I got the Dockerfile from the repo to build actually, but running the image segfaults.

Take care,

[Charles Langlois]

Do we know which compiler version works? Trying to compile with gcc 13 or 14 gives me errors:

| create.c: In function ‘create’:
| create.c:26:20: error: implicit declaration of function ‘mkdir’ [-Wimplicit-function-declaration]
| 26 | if(mkdir(f, perm&0777) < 0)

[Charles Langlois]

Success, i got inferno64 to compile and run! Just had to specify some compiler flags to ignore some errors.

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[Charles Forsyth]

There are several variants like this, and it would be sensible to bring them all together in the (old, 32-bit) github repo.

I might finally take time to do that.

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[Hendrik Boom]

On Wed, Mar 25, 2026 at 06:14:58PM -0700, Charles Langlois wrote:
> Hi.
> Been interested in Plan 9 & inferno os for a while. Been rediscovering
> those wonders recently.
>
> So now I'm trying to get inferno os emulator to compile on my nixos (Linux,
> 64 bit) machine.
>
> I'm pretty much a noob at low-level / system programming / C stuff (I'm a
> python developer), trying to learn and get better.
>
> Not sure when's the last time someone got inferno emulator to compile on a
> "modern" system?

I tried to do that on a 32-bit Debian linux years ago and succeeded.
But I couldn't figure out what to do with the inferno afterward.

Staartine with Linux was coparrtively esy, since I already had Unix
experience daating from the 1070's.

Bu that didn't seem to help with the inferno I ended up with.

-- hendrik
xs

[Valery Ushakov]

Pretty please... (:ShrekCatEyes:)

I have a few PRs for JIT fixes (on arm and power) and for NetBSD/sparc host support.

[da...@boddie.org.uk]

Sorry, I tried to review the ARM ones but, although they look fine to me,

I couldn't be certain that I understood them properly and I didn't have the

time to test them.

[Charles Langlois]

For reference, using the caerwyn/inferno64 fork, I had to apply this diff to get gcc 14 to swallow it.

# -----------------------------------------------------------------
diff --git a/makemk.sh b/makemk.sh
index 00b4a52b..edc68d3f 100755
--- a/makemk.sh
+++ b/makemk.sh
@@ -19,7 +19,7 @@ grep -s 'SYSTARG=Plan9' mkconfig || . ./mkconfig
 PLAT=$ROOT/$SYSTARG/$OBJTYPE
 
 # you might need to adjust the CC, LD, AR, and RANLIB definitions after this point
-CC="p cc -c -I$PLAT/include -I$ROOT/include -I$ROOT/utils/include"
+CC="p cc -c -Wno-error=implicit-function-declaration -std=gnu11 -I$PLAT/include -I$ROOT/include -I$ROOT/utils/include"
 LD="p cc "
 AR="p ar crvs"
 RANLIB=":" # some systems still require `ranlib'
diff --git a/mkfiles/mkfile-Linux-amd64 b/mkfiles/mkfile-Linux-amd64
index 03a47535..c232ca75 100644
--- a/mkfiles/mkfile-Linux-amd64
+++ b/mkfiles/mkfile-Linux-amd64
@@ -13,10 +13,13 @@ ASFLAGS=
 
 CC= cc -c
 CFLAGS= -g\
+ -Wno-error=implicit-function-declaration\
+ -Wno-error=implicit-int\
+ -Wno-error=incompatible-pointer-types\
+ -std=gnu11\
  #-O\
  -fno-strict-aliasing\
  -fno-aggressive-loop-optimizations\
- -Wuninitialized -Wunused-variable -Wreturn-type -Wimplicit\
  -I$ROOT/Linux/amd64/include\
  -I$ROOT/include\
  -DLINUX_AMD64\

[Charles Forsyth]

the first two look like something has very old C code, which should be changed.

can you paste here the code that it was complaining about, if not vast?

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[Charles Langlois]

One of them is limbo.c:
gcc -c -m32 -DINCPATH="/home/drpyser/projects/inferno-os/inferno-os/module" -g -O -fno-strict-aliasing -fno-aggressive-loop-optimizations -Wuninitialized -Wunused-variable -Wreturn-type -Wimplicit -I/home/drpyser/projects/inferno-os/inferno-os/Linux/386/include -I/home/drpyser/projects/inferno-os/inferno-os/include -D_GNU_SOURCE -fcommon -DLINUX_386 -o y.tab.o y.tab.c
limbo.y: In function ‘win2inf’:
limbo.y:1938:30: error: implicit declaration of function ‘tolower’ [-Wimplicit-function-declaration]
 1938 |                         *t = tolower(*t);
      |                              ^~~~~~~
limbo.y:3:1: note: include ‘<ctype.h>’ or provide a declaration of ‘tolower’
    2 | #include "limbo.h"
  +++ |+#include <ctype.h>
    3 | %}

Another when building mk (lib9.c):
---
gcc -c -D_GNU_SOURCE -DROOT="/home/drpyser/projects/inferno-os/inferno-os" -I/home/drpyser/projects/inferno-os/inferno-os/Linux/386/include -I/home/drpyser/projects/inferno-os/inferno-os/include -I/home/drpyser/projects/inferno-os/inferno-os/utils/include dirstat-posix.c rerrstr.c errstr-posix.c getuser-posix.c charstod.c cleanname.c create.c dirwstat.c fmtprint.c fmtvprint.c fprint.c print.c runeseprint.c runesmprint.c runesnprint.c runevseprint.c seprint.c smprint.c snprint.c sprint.c vfprint.c vseprint.c vsmprint.c vsnprint.c dofmt.c dorfmt.c errfmt.c fcallfmt.c fltfmt.c fmt.c fmtfd.c fmtlock.c fmtprint.c fmtquote.c fmtrune.c fmtstr.c fmtvprint.c exits.c getfields.c pow10.c print.c qsort.c rune.c runestrlen.c seek.c strdup.c strtoll.c utflen.c utfrrune.c utfrune.c utfecpy.c utflen.c utfnlen.c utfrrune.c utfrune.c strecpy.c

create.c: In function ‘create’:
create.c:26:20: error: implicit declaration of function ‘mkdir’ [-Wimplicit-function-declaration]
   26 |                 if(mkdir(f, perm&0777) < 0)

      |                    ^~~~~
lib9 compilation failed


I also have linking errors in the original repository so I have to add more stuff to CFILES like "argv0" and "nulldir":
---
/nix/store/k437vl1310idx166rwfad9ydggs7pdxj-binutils-2.44/bin/ld: mkext.o: in function `error':
mkext.c:(.text+0x27c): undefined reference to `argv0'
/nix/store/k437vl1310idx166rwfad9ydggs7pdxj-binutils-2.44/bin/ld: mkext.o: in function `warn':
mkext.c:(.text+0x32c): undefined reference to `argv0'
/nix/store/k437vl1310idx166rwfad9ydggs7pdxj-binutils-2.44/bin/ld: mkext.o: in function `extmkdir':
mkext.c:(.text+0x411): undefined reference to `nulldir'
/nix/store/k437vl1310idx166rwfad9ydggs7pdxj-binutils-2.44/bin/ld: mkext.o: in function `extract':
mkext.c:(.text+0x7b1): undefined reference to `nulldir'
/nix/store/k437vl1310idx166rwfad9ydggs7pdxj-binutils-2.44/bin/ld: mkext.o: in function `main':
mkext.c:(.text.startup+0x4d): undefined reference to `argv0'


Might not be exhaustive.

[Valery Ushakov]

You seem to be building Plan9 version (arg0 and nulldir are omitted from lib9 there)

[Charles Langlois]

This issue is for buildmk.sh, not for an arch-specific build.

But if your point is that this is a normal required change for a Linux build, point taken (it could be documented perhaps). 

Maybe i misunderstand the proper way to setup a build on linux? 

I understand mkconfig needs to be customized for the build platform, but is not used by buildmk.sh.

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[Valery Ushakov]

On Mon, Mar 30, 2026 at 13:52:09 -0400, Charles Langlois wrote:

> This issue is for buildmk.sh, not for an arch-specific build.

[...]

> >> I also have linking errors in the original repository so I have to add
> >> more stuff to CFILES like "argv0" and "nulldir":
> >> ---
> >> /nix/store/k437vl1310idx166rwfad9ydggs7pdxj-binutils-2.44/bin/ld:
> >> mkext.o: in function `error':
> >> mkext.c:(.text+0x27c): undefined reference to `argv0'
> >> /nix/store/k437vl1310idx166rwfad9ydggs7pdxj-binutils-2.44/bin/ld:
> >> mkext.o: in function `warn':
> >> mkext.c:(.text+0x32c): undefined reference to `argv0'
> >> /nix/store/k437vl1310idx166rwfad9ydggs7pdxj-binutils-2.44/bin/ld:
> >> mkext.o: in function `extmkdir':
> >> mkext.c:(.text+0x411): undefined reference to `nulldir'
> >> /nix/store/k437vl1310idx166rwfad9ydggs7pdxj-binutils-2.44/bin/ld:
> >> mkext.o: in function `extract':
> >> mkext.c:(.text+0x7b1): undefined reference to `nulldir'
> >> /nix/store/k437vl1310idx166rwfad9ydggs7pdxj-binutils-2.44/bin/ld:
> >> mkext.o: in function `main':
> >> mkext.c:(.text.startup+0x4d): undefined reference to `argv0'

[...]

> But if your point is that this is a normal required change for a Linux
> build, point taken (it could be documented perhaps).
> Maybe i misunderstand the proper way to setup a build on linux?
> I understand mkconfig needs to be customized for the build platform, but is
> not used by buildmk.sh.

The above failure (missing argv0 and nulldir) is not from building the
boostrapping mk by makemk.sh.

It seems that you forgot to edit mkconfig and you ended up building
with SYSHOST=Plan9 that is set there as it's shipped. plan9 does not
include argv0.c and nulldir.c in lib9. Note that:

$ grep IMPORTFILES lib9/mkfile*
lib9/mkfile:IMPORTFILES=\
lib9/mkfile-Nt: $IMPORTFILES\
lib9/mkfile-Posix: $IMPORTFILES\

it's not in mkfile-Plan9

> >>>>> <https://github.com/inferno-os/inferno-os> to build actually, but

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-uwe

[Charles Langlois]

Oh, you're perfectly right Valery, I got badly confused, sorry.
I had actually modified makemk.sh to rebuild the bundled bootstrapping binaries (mkext, data2c, iyacc) because I though the bundled binaries were not working on my system (nixos can introduce some pain around shared libraries for unpatched binaries). That's why I had those linker errors while running makemk.sh. 
Turns out, by only fixing the implicit-function-declaration errors, makemk.sh builds mk without issues with those binaries, so I had ran myself into circles. 

[Charles Langlois]

Alright, here's another actual compile error:

$ utils.c: In function ‘tksorttable’:
utils.c:1622:58: error: passing argument 4 of ‘infqsort’ from incompatible pointer type [-Wincompatible-pointer-types]
 1622 |                 qsort(c->cmd, c->ncmd, sizeof(TkCmdtab), qcmdcmp);
      |                                                          ^~~~~~~
      |                                                          |
      |                                                          int (*)(const void *, const void *)
In file included from utils.c:1:
/home/drpyser/projects/inferno-os/inferno-os/Linux/386/include/lib9.h:279:42: note: expected ‘int (*)(void *, void *)’ but argument is of type ‘int (*)(const void *, const void *)’
  279 | extern  void    qsort(void*, long, long, int (*)(void*, void*));
      |                                          ^~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~