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On 8/16/2012 8:26 PM, Michael Mol wrote: |
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> Ideally, you'd want as narrow a bootstrapping channel as possible. |
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I guess I tend to think that, too, and I'm pretty sure it's correct. But |
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I don't normally think about why, and since you've prompted me to do so, |
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perhaps it's a good moment to interject the fairly obvious, but |
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amusingly contrary notion that there is too much of a good thing to be |
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had in this dimension. |
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I suppose the main reason to want a minimal pre-bootstrap tool-chain is |
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to maximize repeatability, minimize platform quirks, maximize |
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time-stability in the face of changing code bases, and so forth. |
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Plus... you know... it's a lot more likely to make somebody say "Wow!" |
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the "narrow" way. Which maybe sounds like I'm poking fun, but I do |
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actually think there's some intrinsic value in that. |
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However, there /are/ also reasons to make the bootstrap-er machine more |
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fat and complex. Most of them boiling down to there only being so much |
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time in a day. |
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Otherwise we would boot-strap from stage -10, consisting only of a sed |
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script and some architecture files to generate crude asm lexers .... |
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:) |
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-gmt |
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