Bootstraping compilers ?

pocm@soton.ac.uk (Paulo Jorge de O. C. de Matos)
Wed, 16 Apr 2008 22:30:21 +0100

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From: pocm@soton.ac.uk (Paulo Jorge de O. C. de Matos)
Newsgroups: comp.compilers
Date: Wed, 16 Apr 2008 22:30:21 +0100
Organization: Aioe.org NNTP Server
Keywords: design, question, comment
Posted-Date: 17 Apr 2008 22:33:28 EDT

Hello all,


I am wondering if a compiler should always be able to compile
itself. gcc for example seems to do it, but is this good practice or
should this always happen?


My guess is that this is definitely not necessary. Imagine developing
a compiler for C99 written in C89. In this case, we would have a C99
compiler not able to compile itself, right? [given that I don't think
that C89 is a subset of C90]


Cheers,


--
Paulo Jorge Matos - pocm at soton.ac.uk
http://www.personal.soton.ac.uk/pocm
PhD Student @ ECS
University of Southampton, UK
[Considering that a fair number of compilers aren't written in the
language they compile, it's hard to see how it could be mandatory. On
the other hand, for compilers written in their own source language,
the compiler is often the first non-trivial set of source code used to
test it. On the third hand, read this Ken Thompson classic
http://cm.bell-labs.com/who/ken/trust.html -John]

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