From mboxrd@z Thu Jan  1 00:00:00 1970
From: Mark H Weaver <mhw@netris.org>
Subject: Re: [bootstrappable] Re: prototyping the full source bootstrap path
Date: Wed, 22 Nov 2017 23:56:29 -0500
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	(Jeremiah Orians's message of "Tue, 21 Nov 2017 18:23:02 +0000")
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To: "Orians, Jeremiah (DTMB)" <OriansJ@michigan.gov>
Cc: guix-devel@gnu.org, bootstrappable@freelists.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