Re: [bootstrappable] Re: prototyping the full source bootstrap path

[Mark H Weaver <mhw@netris.org>]

Hi,

"Orians, Jeremiah (DTMB)" <OriansJ@michigan.gov> writes:

>> Hmm, it's my understanding that Guile is pretty heavily tied to
>> libguile/*.c.  What makes you think that it's possible for Guile to
>> run without libguile/*.c?
> https://wingolog.org/archives/2016/01/11/the-half-strap-self-hosting-and-guile
>
> Specifically "The bootstrap C interpreter in libguile loads the Scheme
> compiler and builds eval.go from eval.scm"
>
> Thus by simply having a scheme compiler able to compile eval.scm, we
> can skip the libguile/*.c  Assuming I interpreted that situation
> correctly

Jan is correct that Guile is still heavily tied to its C code.  It's
true that Guile's compiler is written in Scheme and that the C evaluator
is used only during bootstrapping, but the C bootstrap evaluator is only
a small piece of libguile.  The majority of libguile is still needed.
Notably, the entire runtime, the VM, and implementations of many data
structures and other libraries are written in C.

       Mark