[Tinycc-devel] tcc bootstrap

[Christian Jullien]

Hi all,

This is just a question I'm doing for myself.

Currently, when you do a ./configure; make you generate a tcc that is a gcc 
compiled program implementing a tcc compiler. So far so good.
The challenge for a compiler is to compile itself.
Long ago, you were able to bootstrap gcc with any decent C compiler. The 
process was the following:

- use alien C to produce a subset of gcc (xgcc if I recall well)
- use xgcc to compile a first working gcc
- use this interim gcc to produce final gcc.

Now the questions:
- Why tcc remains a gcc compiled code?
- Corollary, can we use this tcc binary on a machine gcc free?
- Do we want a tcc compiler compiled by tcc (an extra step can easily do that)?

Ok, using gcc -O3 you can generate a tcc that compiles faster any program than 
tcc compiled with itself.

Christian