It does, including at least a shell, a C++ compiler, make, and a bunch of other UNIX/GNU tools to run the whole thing. And where do you get those programs from,

It does, including at least a shell, a C++ compiler, make, and a bunch of other UNIX/GNU tools to run the whole thing. And where do you get those programs from, and can you trust them? If you look really seriously, a scary problem emerges. (See: Trusting Trust Attack) The Guix project recently hit a massive milestone in untangling this, by creating a package set which starts by building a 357-byte program and works its way up to the utilities you'd expect: https://guix.gnu.org/blog/2023/the-full-source-bootstrap-building-from-source-all-the-way-down/ https://guix.gnu.org/blog/2023/the-full-source-bootstrap-bui...