Jeroen van Wolffelaar <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>: > I just noted that oaklisp has a 500kB binary called 'oakworld.bin' in > src/world. oaklisp is GPL. It seems one can re-create this binary with > oaklisp, but to build/use oaklisp, you'll first need the .bin. So, there > is no real bootstrapping provided AFAICS, in any case, it isn't used > since the oakworld.bin is provided in the source tarball. > > Is this acceptable? For example gcc also cannot be rebuild without first > having some C compiler. But gcc is a different beast.
>From http://bugs.debian.org/122117 I get the impression that it's the same sort of situation as with gcc: a programming language X is implemented in the language X, and so it has a build dependency on itself, in the absence of alternative implementations. GHC seems to be in the same situation: there are other implementations of Haskell, but GHC uses some GHC-specific features, so you have to compile it with GHC. I assume that cyclic Build-Depends are acceptable in Debian. It would be difficult if they weren't.
