Re: Removing compilers that cannot be bootstrapped

[Ludovic Courtès]

Ricardo Wurmus <address@hidden> skribis:

> It is probably easier for us to try to write primitive compilers in
> Guile than to start from scratch each time.  Then the only blob we need
> to figure out how to bootstrap would be Guile itself.

+1

Though of course, writing a faithful C or Haskell or OCaml compiler is
huge task, and chances are we’ll always miss compilers for some
languages.

So I think we should take both routes: on one hand try to come up with
minimalist Guile implementations of languages (your work with Yale
Haskell, or the project on Bournish), and on the other, with help from
the reproducible-builds.org group, raise awareness about the issue among
compiler writers and users so that the ability to bootstrap from
another, common programming language becomes a requirement.

Of course Guile itself is pretty big, so we may eventually have to think
about a “PreScheme” language, as is used to bootstrap Scheme48¹.
Epsilon²³ contains interesting ideas as well.


Ludo’.

¹ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PreScheme
² https://www.gnu.org/software/epsilon/
³ http://ageinghacker.net/publications/#phd-thesis