Changing Religion (was Changing Religeon)

[Ben Elliston]

>>>>> "Sam" == Sam Couter <scouter at bigpond.net.au> writes:

  Sam> GCC is a package which does what I describe. It comes with a small
  Sam> compiler written in assembly, uses the platform's assembler and linker
  Sam> to build itself, then uses that to proceed to build the compiler proper.
  Sam> So you can compile a compiler written in C without having a C compiler
  Sam> already installed.

Indeed.  That's what cross-compilers are for.

If GCC used a small compiler written in assembly language, there would
be a lot more non-portable, hard to maintain assembly code in the tree
than there is (one entire rewrite per host type for umpteen different
host configurations).  I think you mean that a basic host C compiler
or a cross-compiler is required to bootstrap.

Cheers, Ben