Re:What Is Zig's Comptime?
by euan_torano on Friday August 09, 2019 @08:26AM
(#20653654)
The stage 1 compiler is written in C++, but the Stage 2 compiler will be Zig: https://github.com/ziglang/zig#stage-2-build-self-hosted-zig...
Eventually, i'll be Zig all the way down, but the language needs to get to the point where it can actually support writing a compiler for itself (and Andrew has some big plans for the way the compiler should work from what I understand).
Hopefully stage1 will remain indefinitely for bootstrapping, like LDC's ltsmaster.
It isn't even 1.0 yet, far too early to be talking about bootstrapping the compiler.
Compilers have to be bootstrapped from another language (most commonly C and C++) to get going. Zig is only just getting to a point of maturity where it would be feasible to self-host, and it's still missing any sort of object/trait system, which are the sorts of things you really miss on large projects.
Does anybody know the reason?