Summary

More scrutable bootstrapping process

Metadata

• Id: ca048af8fb8038d8e0dd84dfa95cea89c3dc47a2
• Trac id: 1776
• Type: enhancement
• Reporter: mario
• Owner:
• Cc:
• Status: new
• Component: unknown
• Estimated difficulty: insane
• Resolution:
• Priority: minor
• Milestone: someday
• Version: 5.2.0
• Changetime: 2021-08-12 20:29:25 UTC
• Created: 2021-08-12 20:29:25 UTC
• Keywords:

Description

We currently have two ways to build CHICKEN:

• from release tarballs. In that case we have the C code generated by CHICKEN. In this case, the only requirement to build CHICKEN is a supported C toolchain and GNU Make. The C code in release tarballs is not really "source" code, as it can be considered inscrutable by most humans.
• from git. In this case we require a functional CHICKEN installation (i.e., binary format, compiled out of a release tarball -- see previous item) to compile Scheme code to C.

Currently the most scrutable way to build CHICKEN is using the C code generated by CHICKEN to build CHICKEN. But then, as previously mentioned, we assume the C code we are compiling is thrustworthy, which can hardly be assessed as the C code is the output of a compiler, so very hard to follow.

This ticket is about improving this situation, so that we can build CHICKEN from git in a way that the whole process is more scrutable.

References:

• http://issues.guix.gnu.org/22366 points out the issue reported in this ticket.
• https://bootstrappable.org/ has more information on the benefits of transparent bootstrapping processes.