Bootstrappable Builds: How and Why
1–10 of 62 posts
Re: Bootstrappable Builds: How and Why
#2Would love to see someone try to automate the bootstrap chain from a working C89 compiler to Rust.
At this point I think current LLMs are able help these incredible feats of bootstrapping as they can grind out the impossibly long built times over multiple days/weeks.
I am very optimistic for deterministic builds in general.
Re: Bootstrappable Builds: How and Why
#3Would love to see someone try to automate the bootstrap chain from a working C89 compiler to Rust. At this point I think current LLMs are able help these incredible feats of bootstrapping as they can grind out the impossibly long built times over multiple days/weeks. I am very optimistic for deterministic builds in general.
I am working on this![0] But this is actually a herculean task, I've been chipping at it for weeks and even trying to cheat somewhat by translating mrustc from C++ to C89. If anyone has ideas/cheaper ways to run it I would like to know.
In the meantime, months ago I achieved bootstrap of TCC (then GCC 4.6) via the same path as the live-bootstrap project but replacing the Scheme part with a C compiler in Ben Lynn's Haskell dialect.[1] This was a project I wish I had time to do years ago[2] but never had the time or motivation for, and the type of things agents can do well now (they couldn't write good Haskell a year ago).
[0] https://github.com/siraben/mrustc/tree/siraben/cmrustc
[1] https://github.com/siraben/blynn-bootstrap
[2] https://logs.guix.gnu.org/bootstrappable/2021-05-26.log#1438...
Re: Bootstrappable Builds: How and Why
#4Are chain-of-trust attacks real? Is it necessary to make so much effort to avoid what supposedly never happened?
Re: Bootstrappable Builds: How and Why
#5I am working on a project that will be like a whole environment
bootstrapped from the smallest possible beginning.
I thought a hex-to-binary converter like hex0 was too much like machine code, and I wanted everything to be source code, so I chose to instead start with a super simple interpreted language that is described in english and the user is supposed to write an interpreter for it themselves in any way they want. This way I connect the human to the computer using the language of the human which I thought felt better and easier to understand.
This super simple interpreted language then builds a super simple RISC-V assembler. Here I came up with a nice technique where the functions in the assembler are called through pointers, which makes them replacable while the asesmbler is running. So as soon as the assembler has compiled a better version of one of its own functions, that function is then replaced with the better version while the asesmbler is running and it continues to compile the rest of the code which can then use the new features. So it evolves without having to restart.
Re: Bootstrappable Builds: How and Why
#6Browser extension is same problem but smaller. The .crx file is just a zip,
so anyone can open it. But almost everything in the store is bundled and
minified. You can read it, but you are reading the output of a build you
did not run.
So I made mine with no build step at all. The files in the repo are the files that run. Reason is simple. My extension reads cookies, and I could not find other way to let someone confirm that the thing reading their cookies is the thing I published. Unzip the crx, diff with repo, 10 seconds.
Cost is real. No modules, no types, and I had to write some things in a stupid way. It was acceptable because the code is small. For a big project this is not possible, so the work in this article is important.
Re: Bootstrappable Builds: How and Why
#7I am working on a project that will be like a whole environment bootstrapped from the smallest possible beginning. I thought a hex-to-binary converter like hex0 was too much like machine code, and I wanted everything to be source code, so I chose to instead start with a super simple interpreted language that is described in english and the user is supposed to write an interpreter for it themselves in any way they wan…
I still have a small fee available from NLNet for the implementation of a RISC-V back-end for a compiler (more a transpiler) from a small stack language to assembly. I have already started the effort, but at this moment not the time to work on it. I am available for support. Back-ends to x86, x86_64 and arm64 are available and working. This is part of the MES-replacement project [1]. Let me know if you are interested (see email at the bottom of the website mentioned in my profile here or on GitHub.)
Re: Bootstrappable Builds: How and Why
#8> The hex0 program provides a way to turn a string of hexadecimal text into a binary with those bytes.
I'll use this to ask for an explanation about the fundamental idea: How is hex text better than a binary blob? Both need detailed knowledge to understand; both need a tool to display (reading ASCII or binary), either of which could be compromised in a "trusting trust" sense.
It seems to me that the actually important aspects of the initial "seed" are its size (larger is harder to verify) and that the language used (whether it is Lisp, binary machine code or whatever) has rigorously defined semantics.
(Orthogonal to that, you'd want to store everything, seed and the rest, on a medium that cannot hide anything from you, and use that as the source. But that applies to all approaches.)
Re: Bootstrappable Builds: How and Why
#9Are chain-of-trust attacks real? Is it necessary to make so much effort to avoid what supposedly never happened?
I think the security aspects are overblown... but being able to edit the code of any part of your system is very useful.
Re: Bootstrappable Builds: How and Why
#10We full source bootstrapped our 100% deterministic, quorum-signed, LLVM/musl native, and container native distribution this way from day 1 thanks to the incredible work of this team. Bootstrappable builds unlocked stagex, which unlocks remotely attestable boots that can walk the trust chain from a live server boot all the way back to hex0.