live-bootstrap

Bootstapping is so complex, here's 181-step document to compile Linux: from "commented opcodes" in hex0 to assembler with labels, from simple C compiler to ~c89 compiler to tinycc ~c99 compiler, from simple shell to scheme interpreter to Fiwix unix-like kernel. https://github.com/fosslinux/live-bootstrap/blob/master/part...

I'm trying to simplify the live-bootstrap project by either removing dependencies, reducing build time or making it more unattended (by automating the image creation steps, for example). https://github.com/fosslinux/live-bootstrap/ Other efforts around the same problem are trying to make it more architecture independent or improve regenerations (re-building things like automake during the process). It's free and open source, you're welcome to fork it and try your best with the aid of Claude. All you need is an x86 or x86-64 machine or qemu. The project and other related repositories are already full of documentation in the markdown format and high quality commented code. Here's a friendly primer on the problem: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fu3laL5VYdM If you decide to help, please ask the maintainers if AI use is allowed beforehand. I'

Reminds me of compiler bootstrapping. If you only have the source code of, let's say, Rust and want to build it you first need to have a Rust compiler of a previous version. And for that you need another compiler. Then you reach times when rustc was written in OCaml. And know what? Now you need to build OCaml compiler! Other way is to build a stripped down version of rustc only capable of compiling latest rustc, e.g. using https://github.com/dtolnay/bootstrap Great post on bootstrapping and its problems: https://bootstrappable.org/ Actual project capable of bootstrapping Linux system from scratch: https://github.com/fosslinux/live-bootstrap

BTW, are you aware of the Bootstrappable Builds folks achievements? Starting with only an MBR worth of commented machine code, plus a ton of source code, they build up to a Linux distro. https://bootstrappable.org/ https://lwn.net/Articles/983340/ https://github.com/fosslinux/live-bootstrap/blob/master/part... https://stagex.tools/

Not a programmer, are you? Programmers can fully investigate the compiled binary without anyone even has a chance to lie to them. If a team don't have the ability to audit the decompilation of a 10k LOC C compiler at least once, I doubt their chance against a backdoor hidden in the 100s of steps of https://github.com/fosslinux/live-bootstrap/blob/master/part...

Full source bootstrapping meaning you build with 100% human auditable source code or machine code. The only path to do this today I am aware of is via hex0 building up to Mes and tinycc on up to a modern c compiler: https://github.com/fosslinux/live-bootstrap/blob/master/part... As far as I know Gentoo, even from their "stage0" still assumes you bring your own bootstrap compiler toolchain, and thus is not self bootstrapping.

It is sort of like that. It's been documented: https://github.com/fosslinux/live-bootstrap/ (This is an alternative to the Guix/Scheme thing).

Rust is the trendy language. Otherwise learn the Bootstrappable Builds stack from the bottom up; commented hex of machine code, that with short labels and offsets, that with long labels and label addressing, simple assembly, a subset of C, larger subset of C including a preprocessor, various larger C subsets, make, sed, parser generators, bash and so on. https://bootstrappable.org/ https://lwn.net/Articles/983340/ https://github.com/fosslinux/live-bootstrap/blob/master/part...