Comment by kstrauser

6 hours ago

Read them again a couple more times and it may become clear.

The prior post seemed to be claiming that this required any form of a bootstrapping process, when it does not.

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kstrauser

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wat10000  6 hours ago

This particular compiler does require bootstrapping, and that's obviously what "the compiler" is referring to in that comment.

Building your compiler in another language doesn't help at all. In fact, it just makes it worse. Dogfooding C++20 in your compiler that isn't even built in C++ is obviously impossible.

  • kstrauser  6 hours ago

    It absolutely does not. There is no part of C++20 that requires the implementing compiler to be written in C++20.

    My original point is that you can write a compiler for any language in any language.

    • cxr  4 hours ago

      > My original point is that you can write a compiler for any language in any language.

      A perfectly fine observation on its own—but it's not on its own. It's situated in a conversational context. And the observation is in no way a counterpoint to the person you posted your ostensible reply to.

      Aside from that, you keep saying "bootstrapping" as in whether or not this or that compiler implementation strategy "requires bootstrapping". But writing a compiler in different source language than the target language it's intended to compile and using that to build the final compiler doesn't eliminate bootstrapping. The compiler in that other language is just part of the bootstrapping process.