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diff --git a/presentations/bootstrapping-2018/notes.org b/presentations/bootstrapping-2018/notes.org new file mode 100644 index 000000000000..363d75352e62 --- /dev/null +++ b/presentations/bootstrapping-2018/notes.org @@ -0,0 +1,89 @@ +#+TITLE: Bootstrapping, reproducibility, etc. +#+AUTHOR: Vincent Ambo +#+DATE: <2018-03-10 Sat> + +* Compiler bootstrapping + This section contains notes about compiler bootstrapping, the + history thereof, which compilers need it - and so on: + +** C + +** Haskell + - self-hosted compiler (GHC) + +** Common Lisp + CL is fairly interesting in this space because it is a language + that is defined via an ANSI standard that compiler implementations + normally actually follow! + + CL has several ecosystem components that focus on making + abstracting away implementation-specific calls and if a self-hosted + compiler is written in CL using those components it can be + cross-bootstrapped. + +** Python + +* A note on runtimes + Sometimes the compiler just isn't enough ... + +** LLVM +** JVM + +* References + https://github.com/mame/quine-relay + https://manishearth.github.io/blog/2016/12/02/reflections-on-rusting-trust/ + https://tests.reproducible-builds.org/debian/reproducible.html + +* Slide thoughts: + 1. Hardware trust has been discussed here a bunch, most recently + during the puri.sm talk. Hardware trust is important, as we see + with IME, but it's striking that people often take a leap to "I'm + now on my trusted Debian with free software". + + Unless you built it yourself from scratch (Spoiler: you haven't) + you're placing trust in what is basically foreign binary blobs. + + Agenda: Implications/attack vectors of this, state of the chicken + & egg, the topic of reproducibility, what can you do? (Nix!) + + 2. Chicken-and-egg issue + + It's an important milestone for a language to become self-hosted: + You begin doing a kind of dogfeeding, you begin to enforce + reliability & consistency guarantees to avoid having to redo your + own codebase constantly and so on. + + However, the implication is now that you need your own compiler + to compile itself. + + Common examples: + - C/C++ compilers needed to build C/C++ compilers: + + GCC 4.7 was the last version of GCC that could be built with a + standard C-compiler, nowadays it is mostly written in C++. + + Certain versions of GCC can be built with LLVM/Clang. + + Clang/LLVM can be compiled by itself and also GCC. + + - Rust was originally written in OCAML but moved to being + self-hosted in 2011. Currently rustc-releases are always built + with a copy of the previous release. + + It's relatively new so we can build the chain all the way. + + Notable exceptions: Some popular languages are not self-hosted, + for example Clojure. Languages also have runtimes, which may be + written in something else (e.g. Haskell -> C runtime) +* How to help: + Most of this advice is about reproducible builds, not bootstrapping, + as that is a much harder project. + + - fix reproducibility issues listed in Debian's issue tracker (focus + on non-Debian specific ones though) + - experiment with NixOS / GuixSD to get a better grasp on the + problem space of reproducibility + + If you want to contribute to bootstrapping, look at + bootstrappable.org and their wiki. Several initiatives such as MES + could need help! |