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+;;;;;
+title: Installing HLA on Archlinux
+tags: hla, archlinux, vagrant
+date: 2014-12-27 21:43
+format: md
+;;;;;
+
+I recently started reading
+[The Art of Assembly Language, 2nd Edition](http://www.nostarch.com/assembly2.htm).
+It uses High-Level Assembly language in its code examples and this
+requires a special compiler, or assembler, to turn your code into
+machine code.
+
+## Fixing the PKGBUILD
+
+The compiler, `hla`, is available on the Archlinux User Repository
+[here](https://aur.archlinux.org/packages/hla/). At the time of
+writing, though, that `PKGBUILD` doesn't work entirely. By default
+pacman removes all static libraries from the created packages, which
+took me a while to find out. Adding the following line to the
+`PKGBUILD` fixes it:
+
+    options=(staticlibs)
+
+I also placed a comment on the AUR page, but there has been no sign
+of acknowledgment so far.
+
+## Running on x86_64
+
+After having installed the compiler I got a lot of errors compiling
+my very simple hello world application, as typed over from the
+book. The gist of them was that it couldn't create 64-bit
+executables, which isn't very surprising as HLA seems to be only
+for x86 (32-bit) architecture. Another comment on the AUR page
+helped that though. One should add the `-lmelf_i386` switch to the
+`hla` command-line. So I put in my `~/.zshrc`:
+
+    alias hla="hla -lmelf_i386"
+
+This discovery only came after a few other attempts to install HLA.
+
+## Alternative: Using Vagrant
+
+Before I'd read about the `-lmelf_i386` command-line switch I was
+looking at ways to run a 32-bit operating system inside my
+Archlinux installation. There are a few options I'm familiar with:
+lxc, Docker and Vagrant.
+
+At first I tried to create a 32-bit Archlinux container, but the
+installation script failed, so I couldn't get that started. Then I
+went on to Vagrant, which worked pretty quickly.
+
+I used the `ubuntu/trusty32` box, which can be downloaded by calling:
+
+    vagrant box add ubuntu/trusty32
+
+A very short `Vagrantfile`:
+
+    # -*- mode: ruby -*-
+    # vi: set ft=ruby :
+
+    Vagrant.configure(2) do |config|
+      config.vm.box = "ubuntu/trusty32"
+      config.vm.provision :shell, path: "vagrant.sh"
+    end
+
+and then the provision in `vagrant.sh`:
+
+    wget http://www.plantation-productions.com/Webster/HighLevelAsm/HLAv2.16/linux.hla.tar.gz
+    tar --directory / --extract --file linux.hla.tar.gz
+
+    cat > /etc/profile.d/hla.sh <<EOF
+    #!/usr/bin/bash
+
+    export hlalib=/usr/hla/hlalib
+    export hlainc=/usr/hla/include
+    export hlatemp=/tmp
+    export PATH="${PATH}:/usr/hla"
+    EOF
+
+After that you can just call `vagrant up`, wait a while and then have
+fun playing around with HLA in an Ubuntu 14.04 environment.
+