31–40 of 79 posts
While everyone asks about lisp or forth for this task, I have to wonder what one has to leave out of C to make it "minimal" enough for this task. The subset of features left out might teach us something about the language.
Their goal is to compile GCC, so whatever subset of C GCC uses.
Trusting trust all the way down: How do you trust your assembler to output the exact machine code corresponding to the source? How do you trust whatever program you might use to do the validation? Ok, let's skip the assembler and write machine code directly. How do you trust the program you use to write that machine code? How do you even trust the firmware will execute your machine code in the way you intend?
You write tests.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
A recent comment from LWN on that note: https://lwn.net/Articles/893608/ I asked about this on their IRC channel and got this response from oriansj: Well we did bootstrap a FORTH from hex: https://github.com/oriansj/stage0/blob/master/stage2/forth.s and we did bootstrap a garbage collecting Lisp from hex: https://github.com/oriansj/stage0/blob/master/stage2/lisp.s but if you notice: https://github.com/oriansj/stage0/…
That an inexperienced C programmer wrote what appears to be 5000 lines of assembly in 24 hours implementing a fully working C compiler seems... a rather extraordinary claim. The file size of around 130K would indicate typing non-stop for 24 hours at something like 100 characters per minute.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> but if you notice: https://github.com/oriansj/stage0/blob/master/stage2/cc_x86 .... > writing a C compiler in assembly that supports structs, unions, arrays, inline assembly and a bunch more was done in less than 24 hours by an inexperienced C programmer. That’s a weird commit comment ( “Implemented C version of cc_knight-native” ) for a commit that adds a C compiler. Also, how do you conclude from that that it too…
> That’s a weird commit comment (“Implemented C version of cc_knight-native”) for a commit that adds a C compiler. I read that as "implement a C version of a C compiler for Knight's Landing processors". I might be reading too much into it, though.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> I'm surprised they wrote a minimal C compiler in assembly rather than any LISP dialects, then make a C compiler in LISP I recommend you check out the author's GitHub page. It includes Forth and Lisp projects, explains why C was a success while those projects failed, and challenges any Forth and Lisp fan to actually substantiate their baseless claims with actual work instead of pushing beliefs that don't have any be…
Are claims of easy bootstrapping in Forth really baseless, though? ASM makes sense for C subset, but if one wanted to bootstrap a more complete language directly from scratch, things would probably be different.
Trusting trust all the way down: How do you trust your assembler to output the exact machine code corresponding to the source? How do you trust whatever program you might use to do the validation? Ok, let's skip the assembler and write machine code directly. How do you trust the program you use to write that machine code? How do you even trust the firmware will execute your machine code in the way you intend?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
You write tests.
How do you detect a backdoor inserted in the login program with a test? You'd have to know the backdoor password to write the test. Perhaps you haven't read Thompson's Turing Award lecture and so you have no idea what we're talking about.
Trusting trust all the way down: How do you trust your assembler to output the exact machine code corresponding to the source? How do you trust whatever program you might use to do the validation? Ok, let's skip the assembler and write machine code directly. How do you trust the program you use to write that machine code? How do you even trust the firmware will execute your machine code in the way you intend?
Trusting trust all the way down: How do you trust your assembler to output the exact machine code corresponding to the source? How do you trust whatever program you might use to do the validation? Ok, let's skip the assembler and write machine code directly. How do you trust the program you use to write that machine code? How do you even trust the firmware will execute your machine code in the way you intend?
This is what I don't understand about Stallman. Even if we all agree to use free software, that's only the beginning. The next step is nobody is going to use web applications anymore. Okay now that we're all liberated from corporate espionage what about how the software is made. You can't trust package maintainers any more than you can trust companies. So we all use GNU/Gentoo. As you said, the compiler may be compro…
This was created as part of the Bootstrappable Builds project to go from an MBR of machine code plus a ton of source all the way up to a full distro. https://bootstrappable.org/