Philosophical question on dependencies, etc.

[FX Coudert]

> And, if there should be some active checking, is a gcc_assert() a  
> sufficient way of doing it?  From a cursory glance, it looks like  
> gcc_assert() is defined as a no-op in everything but Stage 1, which  
> I think would mean that it's largely a no-op in anything meaningful  
> with gfortran

No, it's not. When the assert if false, it actually triggers an ICE  
with front-end file and line number displayed. I don't know how it  
does that (and can't look right now), but I'm pretty sure it does.

> does the bootstrap process even run the stage-1 gfortran at all?   
> Certainly it doesn't run it on code with errors or weird corner  
> cases....

fortran/ is not build at stage1. I think the stage1-languages are  
those that are described as bootstrap-language in the configury and  
their config-lang.in file.

FX