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From: | Martin |
Subject: | Re: Truth matters when writing software and selecting leaders |
Date: | Tue, 6 Apr 2021 12:25:25 +0000 |
On 4/5/21 5:52 PM, Jean Louis wrote:
Guix is nice but at the moment it requires Guile(approx 20mb of binaries) to bootstrap itself. Better solution is https://github.com/fosslinux/live-bootstrap - there are even plans to integrate it with Guix directly, Debian and many other projects.I do understand the strive to perfectionism and there are projects like Guix which strive to reach the point you are talking. Maybe such projects can become bootstrapping distributions for other distributions which cannot or did not reach that far yet.
Well I don't trust compilers like any other software and I don't trust any people behind them. The biggest advantage of open-source, gnu freedom "free software", etc in general is just the ability to verify the code itself. There are still many difficulties and limited ways to do it but it doesn't mean the verification effort is pointless. I believe in the future where all the basic computer hardware/software/systems could be formally verified and audited by anyone and in any time. People should be able to build from very scratch, from nand logical gates and below to complex linux riscv machines and above to have full control in all that process. Small simple concepts like transparency, reproducible-builds, bootstrappability, simplicity, minimalism, etc are very essential to reach that perfect goal.What means "to trust" compiler? We already trust our compilers, obviously. We have confidence, faith in compilers and people making it. Free software is insecure and we trust people behind distributions. We have only freedom to verify it though largest majority of users including programmers cannot possibly verify free software on a system as it would take a life time. OpenBSD people are verifying the system for decades they still did not finish. It is never ending story.
Hopefully there are still alternatives, and if GCC won't fix itself on time than it gonna die by natural selection.Maybe you wish to say we have to control compiler, but compiler is huge, not even compiler developers can know what is everything inside, they always find some new problems to solve.
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