fruix/docs/reports/phase1-guile-freebsd.md

Phase 1.1: Guile verification on FreeBSD amd64

Date: 2026-04-01

Scope

This step covers the first item in docs/PLAN.md: verify that GNU Guile is usable on FreeBSD as a foundation for the Guix port.

The work in this step is limited to the current host (FreeBSD 15.0-STABLE on amd64). Cross-architecture verification for i386 is still outstanding.

Environment

• Host: FreeBSD fruixdev 15.0-STABLE stable/15-n282801-29dce45d8c50 GENERIC amd64
• FreeBSD version: 15.0-STABLE
• Guile package: guile3-3.0.10
• Guile executables present: /usr/local/bin/guile3, /usr/local/bin/guile-3.0
• Guix source tree: ~/repos/guix
• Guix source revision used for module loading: 62b61c20bcd20d3e8ec251a96e31f283d6a89374

Artifacts added

• tests/guile/run-phase1-verification.sh
• tests/guile/verify-phase1.scm
• tests/guile/modules/phase1/sample.scm

Verification command

./tests/guile/run-phase1-verification.sh

Result

The verification suite passes on this FreeBSD amd64 host.

Covered checks:

1. Guile module loading for a local test module
2. Deterministic Scheme output (alpha=1;beta=2;gamma=3;sum=14)
3. File I/O
4. Process creation and reaping via primitive-fork + waitpid
5. Loopback TCP socket communication
6. FFI calls through (system foreign) using getpid(2)
7. Execution of Guix bootstrap-related code by importing (guix build make-bootstrap) and successfully running copy-linux-headers

Expected deterministic payload hash:

7465da3704e9af1a71aaf4be99e62cff2631e410d7fe8b0bfbe3daf095de9b49

Two consecutive runs produced the same deterministic payload.

Important findings

1. Positive: core Guile functionality works

The following are confirmed working on this machine:

• Scheme evaluation
• module resolution
• file I/O
• process management with primitive-fork
• TCP sockets on loopback
• FFI into libc
• loading and executing Guix bootstrap module code

This is enough to justify proceeding with the next Guix porting steps on FreeBSD.

2. Negative: system* and open-pipe* currently crash

These commands segfaulted on this host:

guile3 -c '(system* "/usr/bin/true")'
guile3 -c '(use-modules (ice-9 popen)) (open-pipe* OPEN_READ "/usr/bin/true")'

Observed exit status:

exit:139

This is a significant portability issue because Guix and related tooling commonly rely on subprocess helpers in this area.

3. Packaging detail: no unversioned guile executable

The FreeBSD package provides guile3 and guile-3.0, but not an unversioned guile binary in PATH. Any automation should invoke guile3 or detect one of the provided versioned names.

Assessment against plan item 1.1

Achieved now

• Verified Guile availability on FreeBSD amd64
• Built a reusable verification suite for repeated testing
• Confirmed module loading, file I/O, processes, sockets, and FFI
• Confirmed execution of Guix bootstrap-related Scheme code from make-bootstrap.scm
• Confirmed deterministic output for a fixed Scheme workload

Still missing for full completion of 1.1

• Verification on i386
• Broader bootstrap coverage beyond copy-linux-headers
• Linux vs. FreeBSD output comparison from the same suite
• Root-cause analysis or workaround for system* / open-pipe* crashes

Recommended next step

Before moving deeply into daemon and build-system work, investigate the FreeBSD Guile subprocess crash (system* / open-pipe*). If it is a Guile-on-FreeBSD issue rather than a local packaging issue, document a minimal reproducer and determine whether Guix can avoid those code paths or needs a local patch.