Good and bad #bootstrapping and #lisp news.
Timothy Sample has been exploring to write a #bootstrappable syntax-case implementation (the first?) and using GNU Mes to prototype that, sponsored by @nlnet .

Sadly, it didn't perform and #NLnet apparently didn't choose to extend his grant. (Boo!)

Edit: I was contacted by NLnet and they convinced me that they never denied such an extension (or new grant) proposal.
So...that's probably double sad...this seems to have been a most classical communication problem (seen Black Mirror S07E05?).

Edit: Also, the "Boo!" was primarily directed at the possibility of the EU retracting funding, NLnet is doing very important work, and amazingly so.

Anyway, Timothy is now writing another bootstrappable lisp implementation: Germ. It's still pretty early days but it's looking great. So happy with this!

https://ngyro.com/blog/introducing-germ-lisp.html

Thanks @brianokken for mentioning my blog on @pythonbytes podcast. Looks like I need to add my surname pronunciation to the blog. https://www.youtube.com/live/P0VHDhUaWlo?t=1289s

The blog post in question is https://filip.lajszczak.dev/my-land-of-scheme-2025.html It’s meant for people who aren’t up to date with what’s happening in the Scheme world, providing a quick overview of recent developments. That includes @dthompson work on Haunt, @civodul on Guix and Shepherd, @janneke on Mes, @spritely on Goblins and Hoot, and @flatwhatson on Pre-Scheme.

next up in the tabs:

Bootstrapping with Forth by @mei
https://compilercrim.es/bootstrap/

Wanted to share that [Stageˣ] is now full source bootstrapped, 100% reproducible, signed by 2-3 independent reviewers/reproducers on every release, and can build itself.

It can be the base of reproducible build containers for most projects written in c, c++, nodejs, go, php, ocaml, rust, or zig.

I am thankful for the efforts of our team, and the patient advice and tireless debugging of people in the #reproducible-builds and #bootstrappable projects <3

https://codeberg.org/stagex/stagex

I think it just makes no sense to, at some arbitrary level, say: "Listen, we're not going to build this package from source, because: 'Well, we actually don't have any good reason for it but we just won't.'"

#bootstrappable
#bootstrappability
#bootstrappableBuilds
#freeSoftware

#GNU Mes 0.26 released: With greatly enhanced #Guile compatibility, Guile-style modules, and supporting Gash and Gash-Utils.

https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/info-gnu/2023-12/msg00000.html

Thanks to the amazing work of Timothy Sample (and myself :)

#GnuMes
#bootstrappable
#BootstrappableBuilds
#ReproducibleBuilds
@fsf
@fsfe

#GNU Mes 0.25 released: Supporting the bootstrap for riscv64-linux.

https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/info-gnu/2023-11/msg00001.html

Thanks to the amazing work of @ekaitz_zarraga and
@stikonas!

#GnuMes
#bootstrappable
#BootstrappableBuilds
#ReproducibleBuilds
@fsf
@fsfe

@lxo
Right; if the program cannot be (easily) built, script or build-system-wise, it cannot be copylefted.

Without a new "freedom 4" (the freedom to build/bootstrap a program and re-create it bit-for-bit using free software) it would still be OK to require build dependencies that themselves cannot be built (or only by injecting pre-built binaries that cannot be verified to have been built exclusively with free software) and copyleft the program.

I think this is very bad and is already undermining software freedom today.
@reproducible_builds
#Bootstrappable

#haskell q: are there any _small_ and living haskell implementations with power at least partially close to ghc? (e.g., vectors, concurrent IO and TyFams)

( #bootstrappable reasons )

Spent part of my #RechageDay at #AMD looking at bootstrapping #TinyCC 0.9.26 from #GNUMes on #x86_64 architecture. And thanks to #Mes mantainer @janneke for his help with debugging various issues. We can now build initial #tcc binary and it can even run some simple commands such as --help or -vv.

Unfortunately, we still hit some critical bugs when trying to use this tcc binary to rebuild itself but hopefully we are not far now.

#bootstrappable
#BootstrappableBuilds
#ReproducibleBuilds

Talk at IEEE S&P 2023 "Oakland" by Marcel Fourné "It’s like flossing your teeth: On the Importance and Challenges of Reproducible Builds for Software Supply Chain Security"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H0A2cSejlZ4

#bootstrappable
#BootstrappableBuilds
#ReproducibleBuilds
@reproducible_builds

At the Linux Apps Conference 2023 #LAS2023 (sic., that's really GNU/Linux), Dor Askayo talks about making the Freedesktop SDK project #bootstrappable, bringing the benefits of a clear dependency graph of fully auditable code and a build process independent from the previous binary version of Freedesktop SDK (which depended on its previous binary version, which...).

Lovely to see how quickly they took full advantage of us closing the gap between Stage0 and GNU Mes!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jwMEDI4WsAE&t=620s

If you run "guix pull" today, you get a package graph of more than 22,000 nodes rooted in a 357-byte program---something that had never been achieved, to our knowledge, since the birth of Unix: a Full-Source Bootstrap.

Edit: Add blog post link inline https://guix.gnu.org/en/blog/2023/the-full-source-bootstrap-building-from-source-all-the-way-down/

#GnuMes
#bootstrappable
#BootstrappableBuilds
#ReproducibleBuilds
#SupplyChainSecurity
@reproducible_builds
@fsf
@fsfe

Thinking more about ways to get a #bootstrappable build of the #Haskell compiler GHC:
https://www.joachim-breitner.de/blog/802-More_thoughts_on_a_bootstrappable_GHC
(and hoping that someone else either has better ideas, or more stamina, to pull this through.)