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Bootstrappable Builds
Do you know how to make yoghurt? The first step is to add yoghurt to milk! How can you build a compiler like GCC? The first step is to get a compiler that can compile the compiler. Compilers are often written in the language they are compiling.
This creates a chicken-and-egg problem that leads users and distributors to rely on opaque, pre-built binaries of those compilers that they use to build newer versions of the compiler. To gain trust in our computing platforms, we need to be able to tell how each part was produced from source. Solving bootstrapping problems in existing compilers and build systems requires collaboration.
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