They do not use previously-compiled compilers, no. Instead they are working on building an entire distro starting with ~512 bytes of machine code plus a ton of

They do not use previously-compiled compilers, no. Instead they are working on building an entire distro starting with ~512 bytes of machine code plus a ton of source. They aren't there yet, but are getting closer. The Thomson defeat you mention sounds like diverse double compiling, by David A. Wheeler. https://dwheeler.com/trusting-trust/ https://dwheeler.com/trusting-trust/ I don't think what OpenJDK has is something that Guix/Bootstrappable folks would like either, they had to bootstrap off the Jikes implementation in C++ instead: https://bootstrappable.org/projects/java.html https://bootstrappable.org/projects/java.html