On Wed, Nov 13, 2002 at 08:25:52AM -0800, Brent Dax wrote: > Gopal V: > # If memory serves me right, Markus Laire wrote: > # > Miniparrot can then be used to build everything else, including full > # > parrot, perl6, other parrot-supported languaged, etc.. > # > > # > This 2nd step might be e.g. Bytecode-compiled perl6-program which is > # > simple enough to work with miniparrot. > # > # Please for heaven's sake don't write a perl6 compiler in > # perl6 ... It's > # *very* frustrating if I have to download version 1 to compile > # 1.1 and so on... (imagine compiling CVS head with a chain of > > We have to--otherwise we can't have the self-modifying parser Larry > desperately wants. But don't worry--we'll ship it already bytecompiled.
This is actually very similar to perl5, which strictly you can't actually build from scratch without an existing copy of perl5. However, all the header files generated by perl scripts (the target make regen_headers) are shipped with the source kit. Once you've built a perl5 from the distribution source you can actually run (by hand) them without installing that perl, if you really want to. I believe that this is directly comparable with shipping the perl6 parser precompiled. It also means that we must be careful to prevent the compiled perl6 parser becoming trojaned (as cc and login reportedly were on early unix systems). Yes, I've only thought of this because of the recent tcpdump trojan. But I think it's something we need to bear in mind. Nicholas Clark
