Bootstrappable Builds: How and Why(lwn.net)

18 pointsby signa113 hours ago1 comment

andrewchambersan hour ago
Would love to see someone try to automate the bootstrap chain from a working C89 compiler to Rust.
At this point I think current LLMs are able help these incredible feats of bootstrapping as they can grind out the impossibly long built times over multiple days/weeks.
I am very optimistic for deterministic builds in general.
- siraben37 minutes ago
  I am working on this![0] But this is actually a herculean task, I've been chipping at it for weeks and even trying to cheat somewhat by translating mrustc from C++ to C89. If anyone has ideas/cheaper ways to run it I would like to know.
  In the meantime, months ago I achieved bootstrap of TCC (then GCC 4.6) via the same path as the live-bootstrap project but replacing the Scheme part with a C compiler in Ben Lynn's Haskell dialect.[1] This was a project I wish I had time to do years ago[2] but never had the time or motivation for, and the type of things agents can do well now (they couldn't write good Haskell a year ago).
  [0] https://github.com/siraben/mrustc/tree/siraben/cmrustc
  [1] https://github.com/siraben/blynn-bootstrap
  [2] https://logs.guix.gnu.org/bootstrappable/2021-05-26.log#1438...