GNU Mes 0.25 released

[Vagrant Cascadian]

On 2023-11-11, ahojlm at 0w.se wrote:
> On Sat, Nov 11, 2023 at 07:38:42AM +0100, Janneke Nieuwenhuizen wrote:
>> We are happy to announce the release of GNU Mes 0.25!
>
> Regrettably, the post includes a reference to
>
>>   version 0.24.2 has realized the first Full Source Bootstrap for Guix
>>   <https://guix.gnu.org/en/blog/2023/the-full-source-bootstrap-building-from-source-all-the-way-down/>.
>
> which makes a false claim:
>
> "[...] something that had never been achieved, to our knowledge, since the
> birth of Unix.
> We refer to this as the Full-Source Bootstrap"
>
> The author must have been well aware that a complete and reproducible
> full source bootstrap to a Posix-like OS with a C99 development toolchain
> has been done by other parties earlier.

The very thing the "Full-Source Bootstrap" builds is a C development
toolchain; that is arguably the whole point of the "Full-Source
Bootstrap" ... to avoid starting with a C development toolchain, by
starting from source, and building up to a working C toolchain...

So by citing some other project that allegedly got there first, by
depending on an already existing C development toolchain; it seems like
comparing apples to oranges or maybe even broccoli.

I do not see this alleged "false claim", because they are fundamentally
different projects, which claim to accomplish different things, by
different routes, even if they are similar in their end result.

Other approaches to bootstrapping are certainly welcome, and valuable,
and useful, but bickering over this specific claim where you are
comparing different things seems unhelpful at best, and replying to each
and every post referencing the alleged "false claims" seems actively
disruptive to me.

Let the mes folks have their release announcement, already!


I will admit ... The dark secret of the guix full-source bootstrap is
that it does require a running kernel and a guile binary to orchestrate
the process... and so there are technically *some* binary seeds in the
process in order to execute the first bit of source code in the "Full
Source Bootstrap", though the guile orchestration could in theory be
done by hand, as I understand it, leaving only the running kernel as the
only binary dependency... and there is work-in-progress to actually
provide a bootstrap path on UEFI and even bare metal using the same
bootstrap path...


One of the best things about bootstrapping is that there is more than
one way to do it, each has different properties and tradeoffs, and
people can work on whatever part in the complex chain of a bootstrap
process that strikes their fancy and brings them joy!

For example, I look forward (with a long view) to a bootstrap path that
embeds diverse double-compilation as part of the bootstrap, leveraging
the strengths of both reproducible builds and bootstrappable builds!


live well,
  vagrant

p.s. I have taken the liberty of reducing the CC list significantly.
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