Re:GCC Rust Monthly Report #9 August 2021
by volta83 on Tuesday August 31, 2021 @05:09PM
(#28373698)
I thought that mrustc was a different more portable way of solving the bootstrapping problem, since it compiles Rust to C.
Re:GCC Rust Monthly Report #9 August 2021
by steveklabnik on Wednesday September 01, 2021 @11:10AM
(#28380807)
It is different, and is a great project. At the end of the day, with that strategy, you still end up with two compilers, not one single compiler, and some folks are attached to "we use this single compiler to build our entire base system." You also have to then continue the bootstrap chain to get up to current rustc, and I think folks hope that this project will track upstream more closely.
I also don't think that because it compiles to C it automatically supports all of the platforms gcc does, but I haven't personally investigated that because I don't have any of that exotic hardware.
EDIT: oh yeah and the project itself describes this stuff here https://github.com/Rust-GCC/gccrs/wiki/Frequently-Asked-Ques...
One argument in favor of gcc-rs is related to bootstrapping; right now you need both a previous Rust compiler, as well as a C compiler, to compile Rust. With gcc-rs, you need only gcc. I don't personally think that the bootstrapping situation is onerous, but there are some folks who are looking forward to that.