doc: Link to work on bootstrapping.
* doc/guix.texi (Reducing the Set of Bootstrap Binaries): New section.
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@ -20302,6 +20302,28 @@ unknown, but if you would like to investigate further (and have
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significant computational and storage resources to do so), then let us
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know.
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@unnumberedsubsec Reducing the Set of Bootstrap Binaries
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Our bootstrap binaries currently include GCC, Guile, etc. That's a lot
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of binary code! Why is that a problem? It's a problem because these
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big chunks of binary code are practically non-auditable, which makes it
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hard to establish what source code produced them. Every unauditable
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binary also leaves us vulnerable to compiler backdoors as described by
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Ken Thompson in the 1984 paper @emph{Reflections on Trusting Trust}.
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This is mitigated by the fact that our bootstrap binaries were generated
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from an earlier Guix revision. Nevertheless it lacks the level of
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transparency that we get in the rest of the package dependency graph,
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where Guix always gives us a source-to-binary mapping. Thus, our goal
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is to reduce the set of bootstrap binaries to the bare minimum.
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The @uref{http://bootstrappable.org, Bootstrappable.org web site} lists
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on-going projects to do that. One of these is about replacing the
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bootstrap GCC with a sequence of assemblers, interpreters, and compilers
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of increasing complexity, which could be built from source starting from
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a simple and auditable assembler. Your help is welcome!
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@node Porting
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@section Porting to a New Platform
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