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<mihi>Googulator, "seems like Haskell and OCaml aren't the only languages used in Guix without being bootstrapped" -> where did you read this? I'm pretty sure fpc is not bootstrapped either, and I would not be surprised if there are a few handful others...

<mihi>(i.e. where did you read a claim that these two were the only ones)

<Googulator>mihi: no such claim, these are just the ones that are commonly mentioned as unbootstrapped

<oriansj>well Haskell is the elephant in the room (of unbootstrapped languages); others such as C#, Ada, Pascal (FPC to be precise) and Nim are also worthy of mention

<stikonas>well, ruby has pregenerated files problem

<stikonas>less severe than completely unbootstrapped languages like haskell

<stikonas>but ruby is quite common...

<oriansj>stikonas: completely fair, (sadly guix still is ok with pregenerated files) purging of pregenerated files might end up requiring the creation of a new linux distro to support that ethos

<civodul>oriansj: where did you see that Guix is “ok with pregenerated files”?

<civodul>it definitely isn’t, otherwise it wouldn’t care about bootstrapping

<civodul>now, if you’re talking about Autotools, this is tricky, but the goal is to build from source, including that

<oriansj>civodul: as you know Guix much better than I; is there an active push to eliminate *ALL* pregenerated source code files in guix builds?

<civodul>always has been

<civodul>but like i write, for Autotools, it is tricky

<civodul>we can’t just create circular dependency in the graph

<oriansj>I know the FSF doesn't have such a requirement and things are built using pregenerated C files

<civodul>the FSF has nothing to do with Guix development though :-)

<oriansj>and Live-bootstrap is flushing out how to escape those circular dependencies

<civodul>this is great, Guix can learn from live-bootstrap

<civodul>i hope Guix can take things like removing generated files from Flex/Bison

<oriansj>and I certainly hope I am wrong about guix being ok with pregenerated files.

<civodul>(i think stikonas worked on it in the past)

<oriansj>civodul: Googulator earlier posted something you might find interesting for bootstrapping Guix

<civodul>Guix was the first distro to care about bootstrapping, how’s that about evidence that it cares about removing pregenerated files? :-)

<civodul>ok

<oriansj>Short cuts taken to keep things moving forward sort of thing; which now just requires walking back to fix sort of situation?

<janneke>civodul: what other distributions do you know of that care about bootstrapping?

<janneke>(the nixos effort seems to have stalled, i'll have to try to nudge them some time)

<civodul>janneke: apart from live-bootstrap, i don’t know

<matrix_bridge><Andrius Štikonas> live-bootatrap is not really a distribution though

<civodul>right

<matrix_bridge><Andrius Štikonas> It's closer to being a tool to bootstrap distributions

<civodul>ACTION nods

<civodul>i think Guix should learn and borrow from live-bootstrap

<civodul>if someone is willing to submit patches to Guix in that direction, i’m sure they’d be very welcome

<matrix_bridge><Andrius Štikonas> mid_kid here managed to bootstrap gentoo off live-bootstrap

<janneke>civodul: right, saying "first" suggests there are others that care

<civodul>janneke: heh, true!

<matrix_bridge><Andrius Štikonas> But yeah, generally distros don't care...

<janneke>but posssibly "first" sounds more inspiring, dunno :)

<civodul>leaves the door open :-)

<janneke>yes

<matrix_bridge><Andrius Štikonas> Well, some other non distros care somewhat, e.g. freedesktop-sdk

<civodul>oh right, which is very nice

<civodul>(i’d call it a distro actually, even if it’s of a different kind)

<matrix_bridge><Andrius Štikonas> LFS too I guess

<matrix_bridge><Andrius Štikonas> But they themselves don't care about bootstrap

<matrix_bridge><Andrius Štikonas> mid_kid did live-bootstrap->LFS->gentoo actually

<matrix_bridge><Andrius Štikonas> Personally for guix it would be good to be able to build bootstrap binaries both outside and inside guix. Which think Googulator is looking at...

<oriansj>the long tail of making source only bootstrapping (with no pregenerated files) is just going to be a slow process and the hard part isn't doing the improvements but keeping that expectation as part of the cultural norm. Making the dark hidden pregenerated files obvious and tracked; so that we can know that progress is being made.

<oriansj>For example the Ruby pregenerated file issue was one I was not aware of until recently and wouldn't have known unless someone else looked into it.

<oriansj>But that is going to require people looking and coordinating and writing up the findings and ultimately someone is going to have to sort all of those problems out.

<oriansj>can/will guix being willing to require of *ALL* new packages a pregenerated file check?

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2024-06-04.log