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Janneke

If you run "guix pull" today, you get a package graph of more than 22,000 nodes rooted in a 357-byte program---something that had never been achieved, to our knowledge, since the birth of Unix: a Full-Source Bootstrap.

Edit: Add blog post link inline guix.gnu.org/en/blog/2023/the-

#GnuMes
#bootstrappable
#BootstrappableBuilds
#ReproducibleBuilds
#SupplyChainSecurity
@reproducible_builds
@fsf
@fsfe

A graphviz-generated acyclic directed graph showing the root of the GNU Guix package tree, from gcc-core-mesboot0-2.95.3 down to stage0 and the bootstrap seeds.
Maltimore

@janneke @fsf @fsfe

What I don't understand: such a bootstrap must've been done at least once before in history, otherwise we wouldn't have any compiled programs, right? Why wasn't it possible to go the route of the previous bootstrap again? I'd appreciate a link to some further reading on this. 🙏

Apr 27, 2023, 06:52 AM·Quiet public
0boosts·1favorite
Quiet public
Janneke

@maltimore @fsf @fsfe
Some reasons for this include: The process wasn't documented, the code was lost, used many different hardwares, it took about 50 years, untangling history is _hard_.

For that last remark, just look at the Java or Rust bootstraps (they needed _many_, _many_ steps) or the sheer impossibility to bootstrap the NPM/Node distaster.

Quiet public
Andrius Štikonas

@janneke @maltimore @fsf @fsfe Also historical bootstrap might have used proprietary programs, so even historical bootstrap documentation might not help.

Quiet public
Janneke

@stikonas @maltimore @fsf @fsfe
When I said "source code was lost" I didn't even think of this, but you're right: GNU's not Unix!

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