[Vm-dev] Re: [squeak-dev] A Bootstrap Compiler
Göran Krampe
goran at krampe.se
Thu Dec 30 10:36:28 UTC 2010
Hi all!
On 12/28/2010 07:22 PM, Eliot Miranda wrote:
> I simply don't see the benefit of putting energy into other languages.
> I see the benefit of a textual bootstrap. But why is it worth-while
> implementing that in C instead of Smalltalk?
Well, one benefit would be to fit more easily into the ecosystems of
Linux distros etc where they generally get nervous from having to start
from an "unknown" binary.
In other words - if a system can be built solely from text files using
"stock" tools like a C compiler (or any tool typically available in
these ecosystems) then the acceptance is much higher.
A similar example was when I wrote a "module" (=build script) for Lunar
Linux which is a source distro much like Gentoo - for the GHC compiler
(Haskell). GHC needs an existing GHC to compile itself, so the script
had to first download a binary GHC in order to compile the new one.
Not that I think this argument is "worth" it perhaps, but hey, any and
all tools/efforts that gives us flexibility is cool in my book. :)
regards, Göran
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