Of Bounties and Mercenaries

[Joe Buck]

On Wed, Apr 07, 2004 at 01:25:58PM -0700, Tom Lord wrote:
>     > bootstrap starting from several non-GCC compilers and determine
>     > whether you always get the same bits.  Use cross-compilation
>     > too.  You then will prove that either your GCC binary does not
>     > have the Thompson hack, or else that all the free and
>     > proprietary compilers you tried have the same hack, so cleverly
>     > designed as to be cross-platform.
> 
> Well, "same bits" is going to be hard to evaluate given differences
> and chaos in code generation.

You misunderstand.  "same bits" means "same bits".  gcc's three-stage
bootstrap should produce identical bits regardless of the bootstrap
compiler.  It is designed to eliminate effects caused by different
starting compilers.  The compiler compiles itself with itself.