Subject: Re: self-hosting gc From: Erik Naggum <erik@naggum.net> Date: Tue, 05 Mar 2002 22:12:56 GMT Newsgroups: comp.lang.lisp Message-ID: <3224355185019060@naggum.net> * Thomas Bushnell, BSG | Consider that if a Lisp system's GC is written in some other language | (like, say, C) then you now need two compilers to build the language. | If your only use for a C compiler is to compile your GC, then you have | really wasted a vast effort in writing one. It seems quite natural that someone who writes a Common Lisp system would write its guts in some other language first. After a while, it would be possible to bootstrap the building process in the system itself, but it would seem natural to build some lower-level Lisp that would enable a highly portable substrate to be written, and then cross-compilation would be a breeze, but it still seems fairly reasonable to start off with a different compiler or language if you want anybody to repeat the building process from scratch, not just for GC, but for the initial substrate. I remember having to compile GNU CC on SPARC with the SunOS-supplied C compiler and then with the GNU CC thus built, in order to arrive at a "native build" and that when Sun stopped shipping compilers with their application-only operating system, someone was nice enough to make binaries available for the rest of the world. Why is GC so special in your view? /// -- In a fight against something, the fight has value, victory has none. In a fight for something, the fight is a loss, victory merely relief.