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Seconded. With GCJ, Java had a bootstrapping path from C/C++, unlike all the current single-implementation languages: Rust, GHC, etc. Having this path is impo
by civodul 10y ago
Seconded. With GCJ, Java had a bootstrapping path from C/C++, unlike all the current single-implementation languages: Rust, GHC, etc.
Having this path is important from a security and user freedom viewpoint: we could build OpenJDK from source.
Not having such a bootstrap path means relying on huge opaque binary blobs, which is a net loss.
- pcwalton 10y agoWell, for Rust the binary blob isn't opaque: you can go back through the source code history and find the exact source for every revision of the blob, all the way back to the OCaml bootstrap implementation. There's no loss of "user freedom" at any step, just a lot of complexity (but compared to the complexity of, say, GCC it's a drop in the bucket).