>>>>> Ignatios Souvatzis writes:

>> ghc generates binaries so the fact that OpenBSD uses a.out and we
>> use ELF will cause a large difference.  It would be better to start
>> from an ELF arch not an a.out arch.

Ignatios> Does it create them internally?

I'm not sure I understand what you mean here?

Ignatios> And... couldn't an interpreting Haskell implementation be
Ignatios> used for bootstrapping?

Probably not. There are a number of practical problems to
overcome. Just to mention a few:

- the compiler itself is not written in standard Haskell, it uses a
  lot of GHC extensions
- a number of small "utility programs", written in Haskell+GHC
  extensions has to be built first and are then used to build the real
  compiler
- the compiler is not only written in Haskell, it contains parts
  written in C (which I guess would make it harder for an interpreter)
- and I won't even mention what they use perl for... ;-)
- it is a huge system, with a very complex and automated build
  structure (which I guess is nice, when it works...)

I'm trying a bootstrap now, using Linux as a first host. Very
exciting... ;-)

Kind regards,

        -- Urban