As far as I can tell the goal of the project isn't to target more platforms (Rust targets quite a few by way of LLVM), so I don't think I'd choose any other language, including C++.
Having a compiler and standard library written in the language that it compiles has some huge benefits for increasing the pool of possible contributors.
There appears to be an attempt to leverage this project to target ESP8266, which AFAIK LLVM does not support: https://github.com/emosenkis/esp-rs
But this isn't the official compiler, this is someone's personal project?
True, but compilers are complicated machines and Rust is still changing at a fairly frantic rate.
The author seems to be doing quite a good job of development today, but if it has any hope of staying current, it probably needs to think about how to increase its bus factor (something happens like changing jobs, starting a family, or they just become interested in something else, and a single person suddenly has less time to contribute).
I don't think there's any real plans for a source-based approach. But epochs can only change a limited amount of things for exactly this reason; they minimize the compiler burden of supporting them.
It's clearly easier to make a compiler in a higher level language (Python is just an example, but Lisps are suited to this kind of thing). For example, text parsing is easier in Perl/Ruby/Python/Swift/etc. As someone who knows C++, more thought is required to do the same thing as in a higher level language, although it runs much faster. If you just wanted to bootstrap the compiler, then you'd choose the easiest route to that. It could also be easier to read and understand than a C++ compiler.
There is an open source version available in every system supported by gcc.
However C++17 is quite safe, provided one doesn't follow "write C with C++ compiler" idiom.
No, it's not. There is no use-after-free protection among other things. It doesn't matter how much you write code like C or not: it's just not safe.
Until then, those comments only annoy those of us that happen to like Rust, but don't find it mature enough to replace C++ on the use cases we happen to care about.
I don't think you'd find a single LLVM developer who would claim that LLVM is memory safe. Giving invalid IR to LLVM and not running the verifier frequently segfaults it, for example...