Re: oaklisp: contains 500kB binary in source
On Mon, Jun 07, 2004 at 04:41:22PM +0100, Edmund GRIMLEY EVANS wrote:
> Jeroen van Wolffelaar <jeroen@wolffelaar.nl>:
>
> > > GHC seems to be in the same situation: there are other implementations
> > > of Haskell, but GHC uses some GHC-specific features, so you have to
> > > compile it with GHC.
> >
> > GHC can be bootstrapped without GHC itself, there is a minimal C
> > implementation of the necessary code. No need to build-depend on itself.
>
> Are you referring to the use of HC files in porting GHC?
>
> http://www.haskell.org/ghc/docs/latest/html/building/sec-porting-ghc.html
>
> > I notice the GHC maintainer somehow doesn't use this possibility, I
> > don't know why, it makes bootstrapping GHC difficult.
>
> Debian packages should probably be built from source as a matter of
> principle. The HC files are automatically generated (using GHC) and
> should not be counted as source.
Those files are made with happy, which itself is indeed build using ghc.
While indeed the HC files aren't really source, it's more like source
than a a ghc binary, since it is actually C, thus some kind of readable.
Also, there are arch-independent hc files (though not optimised, so one
would then compile ghc two times), so ghc can at least theoretically
easily be cross-compiled from another platform.
But I disgress...
> I'm not sure about that. It's fairly normal for people to implement
> compilers in the same language and I don't see why they should be
> expected to provide a bootstrap path using C.
Yeah, I see. Thanks for the explaination.
--Jeroen
--
Jeroen van Wolffelaar
Jeroen@wolffelaar.nl (also for Jabber & MSN; ICQ: 33944357)
http://Jeroen.A-Eskwadraat.nl
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