Re: Creating a reliable bootstrap for building from source

[Pjotr Prins <pjotr.public12@thebird.nl>]

On Sun, May 14, 2017 at 03:54:27PM -0400, Jeremiah@pdp10.guru wrote:
> > Thinking about it, what I want to achieve is that we can take the
> > latest git tree and bootstrap by building guix and packages. This
> > should be easy, since I have guix running, but it is not. And the main
> > trouble is that the underlying build packages can differ over time. I
> > am looking at gcc versions and guile versions.  I.e., we are building
> > on shifting sands. How unguixy!
> 
> It is worse than that, Janneke and I are still trying to build out a
> full source bootstrap.
> 
> Now mind you we have gotten quite a bit down that rabbit hole.
> ( I've build from a hex monitor to a Lexically scoped garbage
> compacting/collecting lisp and Janneke built his rather impressive MES
> which already supports large parts of the C language and enough to
> bootstrap some rather important pieces)
> 
> But there still are many gaps left to close (how to bootstrap a 280 byte
> hex monitor without a hex monitor or hex assembler, stage0-vm
> downstrapping, MES tinycc bootstrapping, MES lisp bootstrapping, etc)
> 
> but ultimately shifting sands are the only grounds we can be certain
> will be there.
> 
> So we better get comfortable minimizing our assumptions.

What you are trying to do is even more heroic - bootstrapping all of
guix :)

What I want is achievable, simply have the build system as a tested
binary available. A tested builder package that is know to work
against the current tree. We pretty much have it, it is only not
formalized and tested on the build farm.

Pj.
--