what should bootstrap *really* do?

[Richard Kenner]

    I could do all of those things with the old build system.  I can't do
    them with the new one.

Well, actually you can by removing the right stage_? file and doing
"make bootstrap" again, but it's unwieldly and error prone.

    About the only rule that I might have added to the old system was "make 
    unstageX" (X=1,2,3...), which would effectively reverse the effect of 
    "make stageX".

I most definitely agree with that!  Indeed, this is a manual process for
me that's also very error-prone.