How did the first software get on the first hardware?

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The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Serious Hardware/Software Crap > YOSPOS > How did the first software get on the first hardware?

Cybernetic Vermin: Apr 18, 2005

r u ready to WALK posted:

the most fascinating thing about compilers is compiling a compiler

https://wiki.osdev.org/Building_GCC#Introduction

I guess the initial versions of GCC were compiled with some ancient unix C compiler and from there you could use your current version of gcc to build a slightly better gcc as time went by.

I wonder if gcc compiling gcc always gives the exact same result regardless of what compiler made the parent

you link the answer to that question; bootstrapping gcc indeed does build gcc again with the final compiler just to verify that the output is identical (which is important since the original compiler may be so broken that the stage 1 gcc is broken, and produces a broken stage 2 gcc and so on).

it wasn't that long ago gcc could still be bootstrapped with any old k&r compiler (up to 4.something i think), but since they've switched to developing gcc in c++ requirements are now pretty high.

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The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Serious Hardware/Software Crap > YOSPOS > How did the first software get on the first hardware?