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* 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.