Re: how to avoid bootstrapping?

[Jeffrey A Law <law at cygnus dot com>]

  In message <199712091321.OAA28819@portofix.ida.liu.se>you write:
  > This only states that the Fortran part and the C++ runtime libraries
  > is dependent on the C(?) compiler. Bootstrapping couldn't be the only
  > mechanism to ensure this dependency.
No, but it's the one we've choosen as the standard way to build the
compiler.  You're welcome to try other methods, but you'll have to
do some digging on your own.  Look in the toplevel Makefile.in if
you want to investigate other means of building the compiler.

  > Yes. The bootstrapping process is used for testing. Usually the
  > bootstrapping is done in two steps to make it possible to compare the
  > output from the compiler built by the native compiler with the output
  > from the compiler built by the new compiler. This makes a total of
  > three stages. A fourth stage seams to be present in egcs, but I haven't
  > figured out why.
A fourth stage is supported, but by default egcs will 3 stage.

  > Personally, I think that the "price/performance" ratio of this test,
  > is to high for ordinary users. Especially when the last test always
  > fails on some platforms (according to the documentation). Also, I
  > guess that only the C compiler is tested; other front-ends (and
  > libraries) remains untested.
It always fails on hpux10 using HP's assembler.

It tests the C front end, the middle end, optimizers & code generators.

It's not perfect, but it's a whole lot better than nothing.

jeff