> In general, the bootstrap relies on a binary package of the previous version. This is unacceptable for an otherwise source-only, self-contained distribution like the NetBSD sources.
This does not paint the full picture. Rust can be bootstrapped with mrustc, which is written in C++
https://github.com/thepowersgang/mrustc
Now, mrustc supports only Rust 1.74. To build Rust 1.92, you need almost 20 builds. But this can be done from source
Guix has written about bootstrapping Rust from source (they care a lot about this). Here is how it looked like in 2018
And this is good because? Seriously, modern devs have lost their minds if they think that this state of affairs is okay.
For a good while this process was just straight up not possible for C and C++, until someone put in a lot of effort to recreate the bootstrap process for reasons of reproducible builds (and it's still a long and complicated process I think only a few people have done). For decades people were just building from source with compilers that had extremely long and undocumented bootstrap chains (they may have documentation for how to bootstrap from a different C or C++ compiler, but there wasn't one that would start from scratch).
I laughed reading the comment above yours. I also laughed reading yours, you are so right on. Next, I am expecting someone telling that there is a javascript on github to automate that build process...
This is not what I was expecting computer science to become, 30 years ago...
And that JS project needs only 1Gb of node.js modules to run. Aren't computers fun? /s
Go need a smaller chainloading process from C/C++ too. But the good thing it's there are prebuilt self-contained binary ports from every OS to almost any OS so you can bootstrap it with very little.
O really? Please.. can I bootstrap it here?
CYGWIN_NT-5.2 1.3.22(0.78/3/2)
https://github.com/felixmaker/thunk
There are some Go backports to XP.
https://github.com/BieHDC/go-backports