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1. Embed this notice
   notgull (notgull@hachyderm.io)'s status on Monday, 26-Aug-2024 05:39:37 JST notgull

   NEW BLOGPOST: Why am I writing a #Rust #Rustlang compiler in C?

   https://notgull.net/announcing-dozer/

   • Embed this notice
     Daniel Paoliello :rust: (tehpenguin@hachyderm.io)'s status on Monday, 26-Aug-2024 05:39:49 JST Daniel Paoliello :rust:

     in reply to

     @notgull "Which is fine for us users, since we can just download rustc from the internet and use it."

     Yeah, some of us don't have the luxury of downloading and running arbitrary unsigned binaries from the internet. Makes the security folks nervous for some reason...

     Glad to see that this is coming along! I'm excited for another way to bootstrap Rust.

     Haelwenn /элвэн/ :triskell: likes this.
   • Embed this notice
     Haelwenn /элвэн/ :triskell: (lanodan@queer.hacktivis.me)'s status on Monday, 26-Aug-2024 06:10:33 JST Haelwenn /элвэн/ :triskell:

     in reply to

     • Lord
     @notgull @lord Also given how Rust works, it's not just the CPU architecture but also the OS and libc.
     
     So for systems like Alpine they got it cross-compiled from another system, horrible in terms of reproducibility.
   • Embed this notice
     notgull (notgull@hachyderm.io)'s status on Monday, 26-Aug-2024 06:10:34 JST notgull

     in reply to

     • Lord

     @lord Well, yes they would. But who compiles that compiler? And then, who compiles *that* compiler?

     It has to start somewhere. My goal is to create a better starting point.

   • Embed this notice
     Lord (lord@pleroma.lord.re)'s status on Monday, 26-Aug-2024 06:10:36 JST Lord

     in reply to

     @notgull Don't distros would use a precompiled static binary compiler ? (honest question, i'm not snarky at all. I'm not even a coder, i find it very intriguing)

   • Embed this notice
     notgull (notgull@hachyderm.io)'s status on Monday, 26-Aug-2024 06:10:37 JST notgull

     in reply to

     • Lord

     @lord First of all, there are definitely some new CPU architectures in the works. RISC-V is still recent.

     Another use case (and my motivating one) is for distros who want to have a direct bootstrap chain for all binaries they serve.

   • Embed this notice
     Lord (lord@pleroma.lord.re)'s status on Monday, 26-Aug-2024 06:10:38 JST Lord

     in reply to

     @notgull Is there really a point in bootstrapping now ? Isn't it useful only when a new CPU architecture arrive and you want to have all those languages on there ?

   • Embed this notice
     Haelwenn /элвэн/ :triskell: (lanodan@queer.hacktivis.me)'s status on Monday, 26-Aug-2024 06:15:46 JST Haelwenn /элвэн/ :triskell:

     in reply to

     • Lord
     @lord @notgull Yeah, in a way bootstrapping is a soft-dependency of reproducibility.
   • Embed this notice
     Lord (lord@pleroma.lord.re)'s status on Monday, 26-Aug-2024 06:15:48 JST Lord

     in reply to

     • Haelwenn /элвэн/ :triskell:

     @lanodan @notgull Hooo i see for reproducibility it makes sense too :-)

   • Embed this notice
     William D. Jones (cr1901@mastodon.social)'s status on Monday, 26-Aug-2024 06:21:03 JST William D. Jones

     in reply to

     @notgull How is Rust's LLVM dep being handled? Don't get me wrong, I would love to get rid of it, just based on the fact it's 10 million lines of C++, arguably the only language more complex to write a compiler for than Rust. But we don't have that luxury :/.

   • Embed this notice
     notgull (notgull@hachyderm.io)'s status on Monday, 26-Aug-2024 06:21:03 JST notgull

     in reply to

     • William D. Jones

     @cr1901 My plan is to replace it with the Cranelift backend. It's written entirely in Rust, so it should be usable if we have a Rust compiler.

     If that doesn't work, my plan is to write a QBE backend for rustc and use that instead.

     Haelwenn /элвэн/ :triskell: likes this.