| 26 May 2021 |
 Jonas Chevalier | * I think both approaches are complementary | 08:06:51 |
| Jonas Chevalier | there is also the Gnu MES project that tries to bootstrap from a few bytes of verified assembly code | 08:07:47 |
 Gytis Ivaskevicius | Im going to be real with you - I think GNU MES is a cool idea, but not really realistic. Creates more problems than it solves | 08:08:39 |
| Jonas Chevalier | it's a cool idea though | 08:09:14 |
| Jonas Chevalier | bootstrapping is an exercise of balance | 08:09:37 |
| Gytis Ivaskevicius | And technically with additional stage we would never need to update boostrap tools 🤔 Unless ABIs were to become incompatible | 08:09:41 |
| Jonas Chevalier | we had that a while back with Go | 08:10:14 |
| Jonas Chevalier | the original Go could be compiled with C | 08:10:26 |
| Jonas Chevalier | then the next version with the previous one | 08:10:33 |
| Jonas Chevalier | at some point we had a stack of 8 versions, each compiled by the previous version | 08:10:55 |
 raboof | I guess we should add a NixOS page to https://reproducible-builds.org/contribute/ - I'll have a stab over my lunch break :) | 08:10:52 |
| Gytis Ivaskevicius | Anyways, what you guys think next steps are with this? https://github.com/NixOS/nixpkgs/issues/123467 | 08:13:02 |
| Gytis Ivaskevicius | Should I just start working on POC with additional stage? | 08:13:34 |
| Jonas Chevalier | we don't really have a team that owns the bootstrap phase | 08:20:10 |
| Jonas Chevalier | usually the best thing to do is to present a clean plan with motivation | 08:21:30 |
| Gytis Ivaskevicius | Could you elaborate on that? Here are few questions that come up:
- How should it be shaped? Is issue enough or should it be RFC?
- Does it need to include POC?
| 08:23:33 |
| Gytis Ivaskevicius | * Could you elaborate on that? Here are few questions that come up:
- How should it be shaped? Is github issue file or should it be RFC?
- Does it need to include POC?
| 08:24:01 |
| Gytis Ivaskevicius | * Could you elaborate on that? Here are few questions that come up:
- How should it be shaped? Is github issue fine or should it be RFC?
- Does it need to include POC?
| 08:24:08 |
| Jonas Chevalier | I'm still not sure what problem it's solving. I get that the previous GCC version is leaking, but why is it a problem. | 08:28:15 |
| Jonas Chevalier | I know I'm being annoying :) | 08:29:34 |
| raboof | RFC seems overkill in this stage, a GitHub issue might not be noticed - perhaps a discourse topic seem most suitable? I agree a clear motivation (or even better, an assessment of pro's and con's?) is important. | 08:30:19 |
| Gytis Ivaskevicius | In reply to @zimbatm:numtide.com
I'm still not sure what problem it's solving. I get that the previous GCC version is leaking, but why is it a problem. Motivation:
Avoid nixpkgs lieing, especially with glibc and to gain latest compiler optimizations. In addition to these two points - this will allow us to pretty much never update bootstrap tools.
Technically nothing major, just super not nice from my point of view
| 08:31:18 |
| Gytis Ivaskevicius | In reply to @raboof:matrix.org
RFC seems overkill in this stage, a GitHub issue might not be noticed - perhaps a discourse topic seem most suitable? I agree a clear motivation (or even better, an assessment of pro's and con's?) is important. Will do! | 08:31:41 |
 andi- | Wait, we didn't bump the bootstrap tools to GCC10 when we did the upgrade? Was it simply skipped or did we run into actual problems? | 09:37:23 |
| andi- | In any case didn't we have the bootstrapTarballs jobs to exactly get rid of the manual tasks with bumping them? We have to put the files on a bucket but that is about it, no? | 09:38:48 |
| Gytis Ivaskevicius | In reply to @andi:kack.it
Wait, we didn't bump the bootstrap tools to GCC10 when we did the upgrade? Was it simply skipped or did we run into actual problems? Currently bootstrap tools uses GCC8. It was not bumped because this is something that is not expected to be done due to NixOS trust issues <3 | 09:38:49 |
| andi- | We are using hydra to build new version of bootstrap tools it should be as trustworthy as any other hydra output | 09:39:21 |
| Gytis Ivaskevicius | https://github.com/NixOS/nixpkgs/issues/123467#issuecomment-843264782
Bootstrapping tools have inherent trust complications, so it makes sense not to update them too often.
And I more or less agree with him
| 09:40:34 |
| Gytis Ivaskevicius | * https://github.com/NixOS/nixpkgs/issues/123467#issuecomment-843264782
Bootstrapping tools have inherent trust complications, so it makes sense not to update them too often.
And I more or less agree with him
| 09:40:39 |
| andi- | I agree that we shouldn't bump them too often but given that we have a clear path how they were obtained and if that solves an issue, why not? | 09:44:04 |
