Re: Preparing the reduced bootstrap tarballs

[Jeremiah]

> Indeed.  "mes-seed" and "tinycc-seed" are remnants of the past; the only
> things we need are
>
>> What we would need here is something to build the things listed in
>> ‘%bootstrap-inputs’, namely:
>> ‘linux-libre-headers-stripped-4.14.26-i686-linux.tar.xz’ (easy :-)),
>> ‘mescc-tools-seed-XYZ.tar.gz’, and
>> ‘mes-stripped-0.18-0.08f04f5-i686-linux.tar.xz’

That is correct (With mescc-tools-seed adding steps and removing
binaries over time)

> So if you like, please make that change.  There is only one little
> thing: I have no (scripted) recipe to create mescc-tools-seed-XYZ.  But
> wait: I have a great excuse for that...I was too lazy or too sloppy.

I do, in mescc-tools-seed; the script bootstrap.sh when run with the
option "sin" will build the mescc-tools-seed binaries using mescc-tools.
The .M1 files are always generated by cc_x86.s using the C source files.


> The thing is, I used to build mescc-tools-seed, mes-seed and tinycc-seed
> manually from the mes+mescc+tinycc source trees.
I've been building them from the stage0 bootstrap tree (which as you can
see is rather trivial:
https://github.com/oriansj/talk-notes/blob/master/Current%20bootstrap%20map.dot
)


> Jeremiah Orians is
> working to remove any need for mescc-tools-seed (esp. the forward
> dependency on Mes) but I don't think we're there yet.
We have eliminated the forward dependency on Mes for the creation of the
mescc-tools-seed already


> Anyway, I think we/I will have to put some work into scripting
> mescc-tools-seed or otherwise changing the mescc-tools-boot build.
Already done in bash and kaem but not in guix yet (Should be trivial)

> WDYT?
I think we will end up having several versions of mescc-tools-seed; as
each architecture guix supports will end up needing a variant if we plan
on keeping them small. (I also have no idea how to make a multi-arch fat
elf binary)

I am also curious if there is any demand for the stripped versions of
mescc-tools-seed as those binaries are nearly half the size.

>> (do we really need an x86_64 version of this Mes?).
> No, I don't think so.  I added it esp. to get a preview and enable
> future development of pure x86_64 bootstrap; but dependency-wise we
> should be able to drop it!
also, AMD64 does support i386 binaries without issue

- Jeremiah