BootstrappingCaseStudies

Bootstrapped Compilers (written in the same language it compiles)

• Rust: first compiler written in OCaml; then bootstrapped in Rust
  • graydon/rust-prehistory
• Go: first compiler written in C; then bootstrapped in Go
  • the Go C compilers in C weren't written written from scratch; they were derived from Ken Thompson's C compilers for Plan 9
  • Used c2go and grind tool to convert C to Go
• D: C++; then bootstrapped in D (only recently)
• CoffeeScript: Ruby; then bootstrapped CoffeeScript
• Nim: Free Pascal; then bootstrapped Nim

Bootstrapped But Not Sure About the Original

• TypeScript: currently written in TypeScript; not sure what it started with
• Haskell: currently written in Haskell
• OCaml: currently written in OCaml

Not Bootstrapped

• Elm: Written in Haskell
• Haxe: Written in OCaml
• Swift: I think it's mostly written in C++ (?)

Self Hosted Subsets

• C4: C in Four Functions compiles itself
• tinypy's bytecode compiler: The compiler is written in the subset of Python that tinypy accepts, so it was bootstrapped with CPython, but now it runs itself.

Other

• Raku (formerly Perl 6): Uses the subset NQP (Not Quite Perl)

Contributions Welcome

• Feel free to add any other case studies, e.g. Crystal, etc.
  • What about C? Was the first compiler in B, BCPL, etc.?
• Or add links to justify the existing entries (mostly done off the top of my head, after looking at repos for a few years)