mawk — full-featured, single-binary multi-platform builds of mawk 1.3.4

Vendored mawk 1.3.4 (a GPL-2.0-or-later AWK interpreter maintained by Thomas E. Dickey) with a native per-OS packaging layer that produces single-binary distributables. No external library dependencies — only libc + libm, both of which are part of every standard Linux/macOS distribution.

This is a distribution repo (mawk source + build/packaging scripts + CI). See NOTICE.md for the upstream GPL-2.0 terms that apply to the mawk binary.

Binary

Built into each release archive under bin/:

binary	purpose
mawk	the CLI — AWK interpreter

No awk symlink. The user requirement is a single mawk binary in the archive; the traditional awk → mawk symlink is created at deployment time (by the x eget wrapper or your package manager), not embedded in the build artifact. This matches the ljh-sh vendored-C convention.

Install

Each release publishes multi-architecture xz-compressed tarballs. The fastest cross-platform one-line install uses x-cmd:

x eget ljh-sh/mawk    # auto-detects arch, verifies SHA256, adds to PATH

If you want a traditional awk symlink:

sudo ln -s /usr/local/bin/mawk /usr/local/bin/awk

Platform matrix

Six targets via GitHub Actions on native runners. mawk has no external library dependencies (libc + libm only), so there's no bundled lib/ directory — just bin/mawk + man pages.

target	runner	linkage	archive
x86_64-linux-glibc	ubuntu-latest	glibc dynamic	.tar.xz
aarch64-linux-glibc	ubuntu-24.04-arm	glibc dynamic	.tar.xz
x86_64-alpine-musl	ubuntu-latest + alpine:3.20 docker	musl dynamic	.tar.xz
aarch64-alpine-musl	ubuntu-24.04-arm + alpine:3.20 docker	musl dynamic	.tar.xz
aarch64-macos	macos-14	dynamic, system libc	.tar.xz
x86_64-macos	macos-14 (cross from aarch64)	dynamic, system libc	.tar.xz
x86_64-windows	windows-latest + MSYS2 + mingw64	dynamic	.zip
aarch64-windows	windows-11-arm + MSYS2 + mingw64	dynamic	.zip (deferred)

aarch64-windows is deferred (MSYS2 mingw64 cross-compile to aarch64 has known issues with the autotools-generated Makefile). x86_64-windows works; MSYS2 also ships its own mingw-w64-x86_64-mawk package, so Windows users have multiple install paths (x eget ljh-sh/mawk or pacman -S mawk).

Build configuration

The wrapper scripts apply the following configure flags unconditionally:

Flag	Reason
--disable-echo	cleaner configure output
--enable-builtin-regex	mawk's own regex engine (default; no system libpcre/regex dep)
--enable-builtin-srand	mawk's own srand (default; no system getrandom dep)

Build from source (vendoring update)

This repo ships upstream/ as a byte-for-byte copy of the official mawk 1.3.4 source archive from https://invisible-island.net/datafiles/release/mawk.tar.gz. To refresh the vendoring:

curl -L -O https://invisible-island.net/datafiles/release/mawk.tar.gz
tar -xzf mawk.tar.gz
rm -rf upstream
mv mawk-1.3.4-YYYYMMDD upstream

Verify byte-for-byte upstream match after the update:

git diff HEAD~1..HEAD -- upstream/ | head -20

(Repository layout follows ljh-sh/lhasa, ljh-sh/gawk, ljh-sh/wdiff, ljh-sh/dwdiff convention.)

Repository layout

upstream/              # git tree copy of mawk 1.3.4 source (no patches)
scripts/
  build.sh            # POSIX build, cross-compile aware
  package.sh          # stage bin/ + man/, xz + sha256
  smoke.sh            # 10-step E2E test (--version, BEGIN/END, fields, regex, etc.)
.github/workflows/
  build-and-test.yml  # push + PR: 6-target matrix + artifact upload
  release.yml         # v* tag + dispatch: same matrix + softprops release
AUDIT-2026-07-16.md   # source-level security audit
README.md             # this file
NOTICE.md             # wrapper + upstream license split
SECURITY.md           # vulnerability reporting policy
LICENSE               # GPL-2.0 (upstream copy)

Security

See SECURITY.md for the vulnerability reporting policy and AUDIT-2026-07-16.md for the source-level audit of vendored mawk 1.3.4.

License

• Wrapper (this repo's own files: scripts, .github, README, NOTICE, AUDIT, LICENSE): GPL-2.0-or-later (matches upstream).
• Vendored upstream/: GPL-2.0-or-later (same license; this is intentional consistency, not violation of GPL terms).

The mawk binary is GPL-2.0; redistribution in binary form requires keeping the LICENSE and source-available.