Re: OCaml bootstrap

[Simon Tournier]

Hi Julien,

On jeu., 04 mai 2023 at 12:01, Julien Lepiller <julien@lepiller.eu> wrote:

> Have a grep-for-build that is never updated? Build camlboot once and
> repackage the binary (making it a bootstrap seed)? 

Yes, something like that.

Well, the packages that camlboot depends on barely change because most
of them are “core-updates” packages.  However, still.

Some packages (autotools) use guile-3.0/pinned instead of guile-3.0.
Other gdb/pinned (rust).  Etc.

Therefore we could use something like /pinned (or -boot or else) for
building camlboot once.  This allows transparency and being able to
rebuild if the worst is necessary.

But then, we consider the binary as the bootstrap seed of OCaml world.

Maybe, it could be discussed with the OCaml community.

Well, I do not know if it is worth but somehow I think that a similar
strategy as MES and bootstrapping C could be applied for camlboot and
bootstrapping OCaml.  Something like gnu/packages/ocaml-commencement.scm
that bootstraps the OCaml world and this would depend on packages that
are tweaked with a lot of care.  Similarly as the MES bootstrap chain.


Cheers,
simon