Version 2.6.4-1 is the first release of GNU flex.

The xPack GNU flex is a standalone cross-platform binary distribution of GNU flex.

There are separate binaries for macOS (x64 and arm64) and GNU/Linux (x64, arm64 and arm).

Download

The binary files are available from GitHub Releases.

Prerequisites

  • x64 GNU/Linux: any system with GLIBC 2.27 or higher (like Ubuntu 18 or later, Debian 10 or later, RedHat 8 or later, Fedora 29 or later, etc)
  • arm64/arm GNU/Linux: any system with GLIBC 2.27 or higher (like Raspberry Pi OS, Ubuntu 18 or later, Debian 10 or later, RedHat 8 or later, Fedora 29 or later, etc)
  • x64 macOS: 10.13 or later
  • arm64 macOS: 11.6 or later

Install

The full details of installing the xPack GNU flex on various platforms are presented in the separate Install page.

Easy install

The easiest way to install GNU flex is with xpm by using the binary xPack, available as @xpack-dev-tools/flex from the npmjs.com registry.

With the xpm tool available, installing the latest version of the package and adding it as a development dependency for a project is quite easy:

cd my-project
xpm init # Add a package.json if not already present

xpm install @xpack-dev-tools/flex@latest --verbose

ls -l xpacks/.bin

To install this specific version, use:

xpm install @xpack-dev-tools/flex@2.6.4-1.1 --verbose

It is also possible to install Meson Build globally, in the user home folder, but this requires xPack aware tools to automatically identify them and manage paths.

xpm install --global @xpack-dev-tools/flex@latest --verbose

Uninstall

To remove the links created by xpm in the current project:

cd my-project

xpm uninstall @xpack-dev-tools/flex

To completely remove the package from the central xPack store:

xpm uninstall --global @xpack-dev-tools/flex

Compliance

The xPack GNU flex generally follows the official GNU flex releases.

The current version is based on:

  • GNU flex version 2.6.4 from May 6, 2017.

Changes

Compared to the upstream version, there are no functional changes.

Bug fixes

  • none

Enhancements

  • none

Known problems

  • none

Shared libraries

On all platforms the packages are standalone, and expect only the standard runtime to be present on the host.

All dependencies that are build as shared libraries are copied locally in the libexec folder (or in the same folder as the executable for Windows).

DT_RPATH and LD_LIBRARY_PATH

On GNU/Linux the binaries are adjusted to use a relative path:

$ readelf -d library.so | grep runpath
 0x000000000000001d (RPATH)            Library rpath: [$ORIGIN]

In the GNU ld.so search strategy, the DT_RPATH has the highest priority, higher than LD_LIBRARY_PATH, so if this later one is set in the environment, it should not interfere with the xPack binaries.

Please note that previous versions, up to mid-2020, used DT_RUNPATH, which has a priority lower than LD_LIBRARY_PATH, and does not tolerate setting it in the environment.

@rpath and @loader_path

Similarly, on macOS, the binaries are adjusted with install_name_tool to use a relative path.

Documentation

The original documentation is available online.

Build

The binaries for all supported platforms (Windows, macOS and GNU/Linux) were built using the xPack Build Box (XBB), a set of build environments based on slightly older distributions, that should be compatible with most recent systems.

For the prerequisites and more details on the build procedure, please see the How to build page.

CI tests

Before publishing, a set of simple tests were performed on an exhaustive set of platforms. The results are available from:

Tests

TBD

Checksums

The SHA-256 hashes for the files are:

5b26784eee815f81decc3f77eb414019576e453154664433c2714817d43925cb
xpack-flex-2.6.4-1-darwin-arm64.tar.gz

3b6b672e30e6c91557b14f3aea523e2af42140e18905ef741cb88a3b8e5eb7ab
xpack-flex-2.6.4-1-darwin-x64.tar.gz

f58f75328b2adac7e7004460d68df5a0a900928d692481f814db0a61a0da1996
xpack-flex-2.6.4-1-linux-arm.tar.gz

356493f256c68a7fb371ff2dd7d0795d799b9becbc1c5cc3ca3e50efb7952ae9
xpack-flex-2.6.4-1-linux-arm64.tar.gz

131fcc0a59a0bdc56c15754d3e8d7d570e003b8cd28eeea391ec0fe20b4c8616
xpack-flex-2.6.4-1-linux-x64.tar.gz

Deprecation notices

32-bit support

Support for 32-bit x86 GNU/Linux and x86 Windows was dropped in 2022. Support for 32-bit Arm GNU/Linux (armv7l) will be preserved for a while, due to the large user base of 32-bit Raspberry Pi systems.

GNU/Linux minimum requirements

Support for RedHat 7 was dropped in 2022 and the minimum requirement was raised to GLIBC 2.27, available starting with Ubuntu 18, Debian 10 and RedHat 8.

Pre-deprecation notice for Ubuntu 18.04

Ubuntu 18.04 LTS Bionic Beaver reached the end of the standard five-year maintenance window for Long-Term Support (LTS) release on 31 May 2023.

As a courtesy, the xPack GNU/Linux releases will continue to be based on Ubuntu 18.04 for another year.

From 2025 onwards, the GNU/Linux binaries will be built on Debian 10, (GLIBC 2.28), and are also expected to run on RedHat 8.

Users are urged to update their build and test infrastructure to ensure a smooth transition to the next xPack releases.

Download analytics

Credit to Shields IO for the badges and to Somsubhra/github-release-stats for the individual file counters.