[HN Gopher] Intro to GCC bootstrap in RISC-V
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       Intro to GCC bootstrap in RISC-V
        
       Author : pabs3
       Score  : 44 points
       Date   : 2023-01-15 04:12 UTC (1 days ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (ekaitz.elenq.tech)
 (TXT) w3m dump (ekaitz.elenq.tech)
        
       | bjornsing wrote:
       | Why not cross compile gcc with the gcc on your laptop?
        
         | mark_undoio wrote:
         | It looks like the intention is to bootstrap from source using
         | an absolute minimum of precompiled binaries.
         | 
         | For an average user I'd imagine this is mostly just
         | intellectually interesting but it's potentially useful for
         | distros to aggressively minimise the amount of unauditable code
         | involved in their builds.
         | 
         | The GNU Mes project (mentioned in the article) seems to be part
         | of general work in this direction:
         | https://www.gnu.org/software/mes/
         | 
         | Which seems to be GUIX-driven:
         | https://guix.gnu.org/en/blog/2020/guix-further-reduces-boots...
         | 
         | And some funding has been provided to the author to help with
         | this: https://nlnet.nl/project/GNUMes-RISCV/
        
           | tmtvl wrote:
           | People working on Mes and Guix are of course involved with
           | the Bootstrappable builds, of which the site
           | (https://bootstrappable.org/) has more information.
        
       | psychphysic wrote:
       | What a non-article!
        
         | turminal wrote:
         | What a non-comment.
         | 
         | Care to explain why you think so?
        
       | sylware wrote:
       | The only c++98 compiler able to compile a recent gcc is gcc
       | 4.7.4, that being written in simple and plain C.
       | 
       | The bootstrapping project which gnu mes and co are part of, does
       | plan to take over gcc 4.7.4 maintenance (a lot will have to be
       | done, but a lot can be removed).
       | 
       | Yep, moving gcc from simple and plain Cto c++98 was one of the
       | biggest mistake in open source software, ever.
        
         | tmtvl wrote:
         | From a maintainability perspective you're right, switching GCC
         | from C to C++ was unfortunate, but it was done to improve type
         | safety, which is tricky to get right in older C versions which
         | don't have _Generic.
        
         | [deleted]
        
       | robinsonb5 wrote:
       | Interesting project - I hadn't realised we'd sleepwalked into a
       | reality where this would be quite so difficult.
        
         | [deleted]
        
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       (page generated 2023-01-16 23:01 UTC)