Status and rationale for toplevel bootstrap (was Re: Example of debugging GCC with toplevel bootstrap)

[Paolo Bonzini]

 > But you cannot compile *any* Ada program (even
> an empty function) without an RTS in the path since it makes builtin
> references to the RTS.

For what it's worth, that's the same for Java.  But the compiler is not 
written in Java so you can "bootstrap" it as part of GCC even if you 
build libjava after it.

And note that to me this is not really a bootstrap, because we're not 
using jc1 in any way -- it's just built to stress test cc1!  So your 
stricter definition of a bootstrap is not really what GCC has been doing 
for years.  (Not that I don't understand your different definition; but 
it's just a matter of semantics).

Paolo