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Diffstat (limited to 'README.md')
| -rw-r--r-- | README.md | 16 |
1 files changed, 8 insertions, 8 deletions
@@ -27,7 +27,7 @@ command codes. - [stage 03](03/README.md) - a language with longer labels, better error messages, and less register manipulation - [stage 04](04/README.md) - a language with nice functions and local variables - [stage 04a](04a/README.md) - (interlude) a simple preprocessor -- more coming soon (hopefully) +- [stage 05](05/README.md) - a C compiler capable of compiling TCC ## prerequisite knowledge @@ -59,21 +59,21 @@ If you're unfamiliar with x86-64 assembly, you should check out the instruction Bootstrapping a compiler is not an easy task, so we're trying to make it as easy as possible. We don't even necessarily need a standard-compliant C compiler, we -only need enough to compile someone else's C compiler, specifically we'll be +only need enough to compile someone else's C compiler. Specifically, we'll be using [TCC](https://bellard.org/tcc/) since it's written (mostly) in standard C89. - efficiency is not a concern We will create big and slow executables, and that's okay. It doesn't really -matter if compiling TCC takes 8 as opposed to 0.01 seconds; once we compile TCC -with itself, we'll get the same executable either way. +matter if compiling TCC takes 30 as opposed to 0.01 seconds; once the process +is finished, we'll get the same executable either way. ## reflections on trusting trust In 1984, Ken Thompson wrote the well-known article [Reflections on Trusting Trust](http://users.ece.cmu.edu/~ganger/712.fall02/papers/p761-thompson.pdf). -This is one of the inspirations for this project. To summarize -the article: it is possible to create a malicious C compiler which will +This is one of the inspirations for this project. A brief summary is: +it's possible to create a malicious C compiler which will replicate its own malicious functionalities (e.g. detecting password-checking routines to make them also accept another password the attacker knows) when used to compile other C compilers. For all we know, such a compiler was used to @@ -224,10 +224,10 @@ Arguments are passed in The return value is placed in rax. ``` -More will be added in the future as needed. - ## license +Note that this does not apply to TCC's source code (`05/tcc-0.9.27`). + ``` This project is in the public domain. Any copyright protections from any law are forfeited by the author(s). No warranty is provided, and the author(s) |