Earlier quoted context omitted.
You said: > This particular compiler does require bootstrapping, and that's obviously what "the compiler" is referring to in that comment. You have to pick an option: either it requires bootstrapping, or it doesn’t. As it’s possible to write the C++20 compiler features in C++11 (or whatever GCC or Clang are written in these days), it factually does not require bootstrapping.
Here, "requires bootstrapping" means "gcc needs to be able to build with gcc, including older versions of gcc."
> So you can never be perfectly bleeding edge as it'd keep you from being able to build your compiler with an older compiler that doesn't support those bleeding edge features.
…as though building the new version of the compiler depended on the features it’s implementing already existing. This is clearly not the case.