Re: Fwd: gcj can not import packages

[Ricardo Wurmus <rekado@elephly.net>]

Matthias Klose <doko@ubuntu.com> writes:

> yes, you need some trusted binaries.  For example, there are various Linux
> distributions which provide these binaries.  And even if you want to build for a
> target that doesn't have binaries, you can first build a native openjdk on your
> build platform, and then cross-build for your target.  I built several Linux
> architectures this way ...

The Bootstrappable Builds project[1] ties to remove the number of
trusted binaries to bootstrap a modern system.  One way to get there is
to have a bootstrap path that leads to the unavoidable C compiler.

And even the C compiler doesn’t *have* to be a trusted binary.  The Mes
project[2] tries to build a C compiler using a minimal, hand-verifyable
Scheme implementation, for example.

I just find it sad to see GCJ go, because it makes it quite a bit harder
to build the OpenJDK without a trusted JDK.  Relying on the last release
of GCC that included the GCJ sources isn’t a viable long-term solution,
because, as experience has shown, build systems of the past become
unsupported and harder to satisfy as time passes.  It is, for example,
quite a challenge to build the GNU Pascal compiler (needed to bootstrap
the self-hosted Freepascal compiler from source) from a decade back with
a modern toolchain.

[1]: http://bootstrappable.org
[2]: https://gitlab.com/janneke/mes

--
Ricardo

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