Re: Building Bash with Geesh

[Jan Nieuwenhuizen <janneke@gnu.org>]

Ludovic Courtès writes:

>>>     • It requires Guile 2.2, while (I assume) the current bootstrap
>>>       Guile is version 2.0;
>>
>> That should be OK too, I'll leave Ludo' to comment on this, but Gash
>> also needs Guile 2.2; on my Guix wip-bootstrap branch I already upgraded
>> Guile.
>
> Which parts of 2.2 that 2.0 lacks does it need?  PEG?

I was a bit quick here, as I thought that we wanted to move to 2.2
anyway.  Until recently we needed PEG, but Gash now includes a modified
copy of it.  So I suspect that staying on 2.0 for a bit might be
feasible (I haven't looked at details).

> Overall I’m in favor of changing the bootstrap seeds as rarely as
> possible.  Also, if our horizon is a full Scheme bootstrap has Jan
> proposed (and I think that’s a great plan!), then perhaps we’ll have to
> arrange to not rely on fancy Guile features in build-side code meant to
> run early on during bootstrap.  So far it was easy to keep (guix build …) 
> valid for both 2.2 and 2.0, but these are simple modules; I don’t know
> whether that’s reasonably feasible for more complex pieces of software
> like Geesh and Gash.

OK.  In any case would be nice if the 2.0->2.2 upgrade can be a separate
decision rather than a dependency for Gash (or Geesh).

> All that said, the benefit of removing Bash from the seeds may well
> outweigh the “cost” of upgrading to Guile 2.2.

That's great, we'll see!

> It’d be great if both projects could converge; there’ll still be plenty
> of challenges to satisfy your playfulness anyway.  :-)  (Like, say, a
> shell→tree-il front-end, hint hint ;-)).

Well, there's another challenge I have tried not to think of :)

> That said I can imagine it’s not that easy and maybe also less fun but
> it would help the longer-term goal of building a solid foundation for
> bootstrapped distros.

It's hard to see for me beyond the horizon of a Scheme-only bootstrap.
Once we get there, we may want to make the bootstrap Scheme more tiny,
either by making a more tiny, bootstrappable Guile or replacing Guile
with Mes.

> Anyway, kudos on these achievements!  I guess we at least need Geesh and
> Gash packages now!  :-)

Hehe, there's a Gash package on wip-bootstrap.  However, Gash is still
failing 19 (of 120) shell test; we'll want to fix those before releasing
0.1.  Also the concept of `export' is missing entirely.

janneke

-- 
Jan Nieuwenhuizen <janneke@gnu.org> | GNU LilyPond http://lilypond.org
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