From 29075fd652594f7a47ee333041f6605b9cb1f56d Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001
From: Tom Willemse
Date: Sat, 27 Dec 2014 21:44:45 +0100
Subject: Add articles

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+#+TITLE:
+#+STARTUP: showall
+
+* Installing HLA on Archlinux                          :hla:archlinux:
+  :PROPERTIES:
+  :PUBDATE:  <2014-12-27 Sat 21:43>
+  :END:
+
+  I recently started reading [[http://www.nostarch.com/assembly2.htm][The Art of Assembly Language, 2nd
+  Edition]]. 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
+   [[https://aur.archlinux.org/packages/hla/][here]]. 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:
+
+   #+BEGIN_SRC sh
+     options=(staticlibs)
+   #+END_SRC
+
+   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=:
+
+   #+BEGIN_SRC sh
+     alias hla="hla -lmelf_i386"
+   #+END_SRC
+
+   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~:
+
+   #+BEGIN_SRC ruby
+     # -*- mode: ruby -*-
+     # vi: set ft=ruby :
+
+     Vagrant.configure(2) do |config|
+       config.vm.box = "ubuntu/trusty32"
+       config.vm.provision :shell, path: "vagrant.sh"
+     end
+   #+END_SRC
+
+   and then the provision in ~vagrant.sh~:
+
+   #+BEGIN_SRC 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
+   #+END_SRC
+
+   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.
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