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GNU Software Available Now

We offer Unix software source distributions tapes in tar format on the following media:

We also offer:

The contents of the various 9-track and cartridge tapes for Unix systems are the same (except for the RS/6000 Emacs tape, which also has executables); only the media are different (see the "Free Software Foundation Order Form"). Source code for the documentation comes in Texinfo format. We welcome all bug reports.

Some of the files on the tapes may be compressed with gzip to make them fit. Refer to the top-level `README' file at the beginning of each tape for instructions on uncompressing them. uncompress and unpack do not work!

Version numbers listed after program names were current at the time this Bulletin was published. When you order a distribution tape, some of the programs might be newer, and therefore the version number higher.

Contents of the Emacs Tape

Contents of the Scheme Tape

This tape contains MIT Scheme 7.1. Scheme is a simplified, lexically-scoped dialect of Lisp. It was designed at MIT and other universities to teach students the art of programming, and to research new parallel programming constructs and compilation techniques. The current version conforms to the (MIT AI Lab Memo 848b), for which TeX source is included.

MIT Scheme is written in C, but is presently hard to bootstrap. Binaries which can be used to bootstrap Scheme are available for the following systems:

Contents of the Languages Tape

This tape contains programming tools: compilers, interpreters, and related programs (parsers, conversion programs, debuggers, etc.).

Contents of the Utilities Tape

This tape consists mostly of smaller utilities and miscellaneous applications not available on the other GNU tapes.

Contents of the Experimental Tape

This tape includes software which is currently in beta test and is available for people who are feeling adventurous. Some of the software already has released versions on the distribution tapes. The contents of this tape are transient; as the programs become stable, they will replace older versions on other tapes. Please send bug reports to the address in the notes for each program on the tape. Note that Emacs 19, in beta test, is on the Emacs tape.

Contents of the X11 Tapes

The two X11 tapes contain Version 11, Release 5 of the MIT X Window System. The first FSF tape contains all of the core software, documentation, and some contributed clients. We call this the "required" X tape since it is necessary for running X or running GNU Emacs under X. The second, "optional", FSF tape contains contributed libraries and other toolkits, the Andrew Use Interface System, games, and other programs.

The X11 Required tape also contains all fixes and patches released to date.

Berkeley Networking 2 Tape

The Berkeley "Net2" release contains the second 4.3 BSD distribution and is newer than both 4.3BSD-Tahoe and 4.3BSD-Reno. It includes most of the BSD software system except for a few utilities, some parts of the kernel, and some library routines which your own C library is likely to provide (we have replacements on other tapes for many of the missing programs). This release also contains third party software including Kerberos and some GNU software.

VMS Emacs and Compiler Tapes

We offer two VMS tapes. One has just the GNU Emacs editor. The other has the GNU C compiler, Bison (to compile GCC), (gas) (to assemble GCC's output), and some library and include files. We are not aware of a GDB port for VMS. Both VMS tapes have executables from which you can bootstrap, as the DEC VMS C compiler cannot compile GCC. Please do not ask us to devote effort to VMS support, because it is peripheral to the GNU Project.

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