The African Chief wrote:
That does reduce disk usage - but it still takes 2 hours or more. Why do we actually need to make the bootstrap? Presumably this is to upgrade your version of GCC in the first instance - but when you do have an up-to-date GCC, is it still necessary to make bootstrap just to compile GPC?
IMHO, it is not. The bootstrap first uses the - possibly non-free - of your system to produce a first GCC and then uses that to produce the real GCC. This solves some licensing issues and provides some consistency to GCC. (Otherwise there would be a lot of versions of GCC around which differ in the compiler they have been compiled with.) IMHO this is not necessary on systems where an up-to-date GCC is the default CC anyway.
Peter