Maybe they can call it a Crab compiler, see also:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36122270 - Rust has been forked to the Crab Language (2023-05-30)
I can think of some plausible reasons, like:
- The backends were contributed by people that have no interest in writing another backend in a different compiler framework or are retired/dead/not paid to do it anymore and no one knows the intracies anymore
- Implementing a backend for LLVM is actually harder than writing a new frontend for GCC due to the instability of LLVM IR
But I'm interested what others think. It seems like the industry could burn the candle from both ends, as it were.
I see not just zero but actual negative utility to a second rustic implementation.
I suspect being able to use GCC might help rust adoption in the kernel because it means people don’t have to use a second to compiler.
But you still need GCC + rustc to compile the full kernel. And that’s what was suggesting was an issue. I suspect people want to be able to use only GCC.
But they’re talking about making a second implantation for the purpose of quirks documentation and standardization. Rust doesn’t need that.
And having multiple bootstrapping methods just makes it nicer. Helps with efforts like those of GNU Guix and other similar projects[0] that want to be able to have proper provenance for packages. Could help mitigate certain classes of supply chain attacks. (Even if not eliminate them completely!)
[0]: <https://bootstrappable.org/>