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+Installing hosted Inferno from source
+
+Overview
+
+     Like the native kernels  emu relies on  several  auxil-
+iary libraries (the source of which it often shares with the
+native kernels).  Emu itself is built by the  mkfile in the
+emu subdirectory containing the platform-specific source for
+the host platform.  Each library has its own    mkfile;  the
+various  components  are  made  in  the  right order by the
+mkfile at the root of the Inferno tree.   The    mkfile  for
+each  platform  will also invoke  mk recursively to make the
+appropriate libraries for a given configuration.
+
+     The Unix emu variant generally is  covered  by  `POSIX'
+(with  common  extensions)  but  each Unix port has one file
+that   differs   considerably   for   each   port,    namely
+emu/platform/os.c, the differences corresponding to the dif-
+ferent ways  under  Unix  of  implementing  kernel-scheduled
+threads efficiently.
+
+     There  are  working  emu  versions   for   FreeBSD/386,
+Irix/mips,  Linux/386, NetBSD/386, MacOSX/386, MacOSX/power,
+Plan 9, Solaris/sparc, and Windows (NT,  2000  and  Explorer
+plug-in).   Each platform typically uses mechanisms specific
+to the host operating system to implement Inferno's internal
+thread/process  structure.   POSIX  threads  have often been
+found to be insufficient (poorly implemented) on some  plat-
+forms, and if so are avoided.  See  kproc in  emu/*/os.c.
+
+     Source is included for ports to HP/UX  (S800  architec-
+ture),  Solaris/386, and Unixware, in case someone wishes to
+take them up now, but we have not determined their fitness.
+
+     The Plan 9 hosted implementation is unusual in that  it
+supports several processor types:  386,  mips,  power (Power
+PC) and  sparc.  Furthermore, all versions of   emu  can  be
+built on any processor type, in the usual way for Plan 9.
+
+     Otherwise, as distributed,  emu for a platform can only
+be built when running on that platform.
+
+     One unusual variant makes the whole of Inferno a  plug-
+in  for Microsoft's Internet Explorer, giving the same envi-
+ronment for Inferno applications running in an HTML page  as
+is  provided by hosted or native Inferno.  That is, there is
+not a distinct `applet' environment with special programming
+interfaces.   The  source for the various plug-in components
+is found in  /tools/plugin and    /usr/internet  within  the
+Inferno  tree;  they  use the version of  emu defined by the
+configuration file  /emu/Nt/ie.
+
+Build steps
+
+     All the libraries and executables can  be  built  in  a
+tree containing only the source code.  To do that for a sup-
+ported variant of hosted Inferno, on Unix or Plan 9, do  the
+following in the root of the Inferno tree:
+
+1    Edit    mkconfig  to  reflect  your  host  environment,
+     specifically  ROOT  (which  must  be  an  absolute path
+     name), SYSHOST and OBJTYPE.  The comments in  the  file
+     should help you choose.
+
+2    Run  makemk.sh to rebuild the   mk  command,  which  is
+     used to build everything else.
+
+3    Set  PATH (or  path on Plan 9)  to  include  the    bin
+     directory for the platform, which will now contain the
+     mk binary just built.  On Unix, export  PATH.
+
+4    Then  mk nuke to remove any extraneous object files.
+
+5    Finally,    mk  install  to  create  and  install   the
+     libraries,    limbo  compiler,  emu for hosted Inferno,
+     and auxiliary commands.  The rules do that in an  order
+     that ensures that the commands or libraries needed by a
+     later stage are built and installed first.  (Note  that
+     a  plain   mk will not suffice, because it does not put
+     the results in the search path.)
+
+Doing something similar  on  Windows  or  Plan  9  currently
+requires  the  executable  for    mk  to be available in the
+search path, since there is no  equivalent  of    makemk.sh.
+Otherwise  the procedure is the same.  On Plan 9, of course,
+the host system's normal version of  mk should be adequate.