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bootstrap.md

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 # Bootstrap/Boot
 
-In general bootstrapping (from the idiom "pull yourself up by your bootstraps"), sometimes shortened to just *booting*, refers to a clever process of self-establishing a relatively complex system starting from something very small, without much external help. A nice example comes from the nature: a big plant that can do complex things such as reproduce itself initially grows ("bootstraps") from just a very tiny seed. As another example imagine something like a "civilization bootstrapping kit" that contains only a few primitive tools along with instructions on how to use those tools to mine ore, turn it into metal out of which one makes more tools which will be used to obtain more material and so on up until having basically all modern technology and factories set up in relatively short time ([civboot](civboot.md) is a project like this). The term *bootstrapping* is however especially relevant in relation to [computer](computer.md) technology -- here it has two main meanings:
+In general *bootstrapping* (from the idiom "pull yourself up by your bootstraps"), sometimes shortened to just *booting*, refers to a clever process of self-establishing a relatively complex system starting from something very small, without much external help. Nature itself provides a beautiful example: a large plant capable of complex behavior (such as reproduction) initially grows ("bootstraps") from just a very tiny seed. As another example imagine something like a "civilization bootstrapping kit" that contains only a few primitive tools along with instructions on how to use those tools to mine ore, turn it into metal out of which one makes more tools which will be used to obtain more material and so on up until having basically all modern technology and factories set up in relatively short time ([civboot](civboot.md) is a [project](project.md) like this). The term *bootstrapping* is however especially relevant in relation to [computer](computer.md) technology -- here it possesses two main meanings:
 
 - The process by which a computer starts and sets up the [operating system](operating_system.md) after power on, which often involves several stages of loading various modules, running several bootloaders etc. This is traditionally called **booting** (*rebooting* means restarting the computer).
 - Utilizing the principle of bootstrapping for making greatly independent [software](software.md), i.e. software that doesn't [depend](depend.md) on other software as it can set itself up. This is usually what **bootstrapping** (the longer term) means. This is also greatly related to **[self hosting](self_hosting.md)**, another principle whose idea is to "implement technology using itself".
 
 ## Bootstrapping: Making Dependency-Free Software
 
-Bootstrapping -- as the general concept of letting a big thing grow out of a small seed -- may aid us in building extremely [free](free_software.md) (as in freedom), [portable](portability.md), self-contained (and also [secure](security.md)) technology by reducing all its [dependencies](dependency.md) to a minimum. If we are building a big computing environment (such as an operating system), we should make sure that all the big things it contains are made only with the smaller things that are further on built using yet smaller things and so on until some very tiny piece of code, i.e. we shall make sure there is always a way to set this whole system from the ground up, from a very small amount of initial code/tools. Being able to do this means our system is *bootstrappable* and it will allow us for example to set our whole system up on a completely new computing platform (e.g. a new CPU architecture) as long as we can set up that tiny initial prerequisite code. This furthermore removes the danger of dependencies that might kill our system and also allows security freaks to inspect the whole process of the system set up so that they can trust it (because even free software that sometime in the past touched a proprietary compiler can't generally be trusted -- see [trusting trust](trusting_trust.md)). I.e. bootstrapping means creating a very small amount of code that will self-establish our whole computing environment by first compiling small compilers that will then compile more complex compilers which will compile all the tools and programs etc. This topic is discussed for example in designing [programming language](programming_language.md) [compilers](compiler.md) and [operating systems](os.md). For examples of bootstrapping see e.g. [DuskOS](duskos.md) ([collapse](collapse.md)-ready operating system that bootstraps itself from a tiny amount of code), [GNU](gnu.md) [mes](mes.md) (bootstrapping system of the GNU operating system) or [comun](comun.md) (LRS programming language, now self hosted and bootstrappable e.g. from a few hundred lines of [C](c.md)).
+Bootstrapping -- as the general concept of letting a big thing grow out of a small seed -- may aid us in building extremely [free](free_software.md) (as in freedom), [portable](portability.md), self-contained (and yes, for those who care also more [secure](security.md)) technology by reducing all its [dependencies](dependency.md) to a bare minimum. If we are building a big computing environment (such as an operating system), we should make sure that all the big things it contains are made only with the smaller things that are further on built using yet smaller things and so on until some very tiny piece of code, i.e. we shall make sure there is always a way to set this whole system from the ground up, from a very small amount of initial code/tools. Being able to do this means our system is *bootstrappable* and it will allow us for example to set our whole system up on a completely new computing platform (e.g. a new CPU architecture) as long as we can set up that tiny initial prerequisite code. This furthermore removes the danger of dependencies that might kill our system and also allows security freaks to inspect the whole process of the system set up so that they can trust it (because even free software that sometime in the past touched a proprietary compiler can't generally be trusted -- see [trusting trust](trusting_trust.md)). I.e. bootstrapping means creating a very small amount of code that will self-establish our whole computing environment by first compiling small compilers that will then compile more complex compilers which will compile all the tools and programs etc. This topic is discussed for example in designing [programming language](programming_language.md) [compilers](compiler.md) and [operating systems](os.md). For examples of bootstrapping see e.g. [DuskOS](duskos.md) ([collapse](collapse.md)-ready operating system that bootstraps itself from a tiny amount of code), [GNU](gnu.md) [mes](mes.md) (bootstrapping system of the GNU operating system) or [comun](comun.md) (LRS programming language, now self hosted and bootstrappable e.g. from a few hundred lines of [C](c.md)).
 
-**Why be concerned with bootstrapping when we already have our systems set up?** Besides the obvious elegance of this whole approach there are many other practical reasons -- as mentioned, some are concerned about "security", some want portability, control and independence -- one of other notable justifications is that we may lose our current technology due to societal [collapse](collapse.md), which is not improbable as it keeps happening throughout history over and over, so many people fear (rightfully so) that if by whatever disaster we lose our current computers, Internet etc., we will also lose with it all modern art, data, software we so painfully developed, digitized books and so on; not talking about the horrors that will follow if we're unable to quickly reestablish our computer networks we are so dependent on. Setting up what we currently have completely from scratch would be extremely difficult, a task for centuries -- just take a while to consider all the activity and knowledge that's required around the globe to create a single computer with all its billions of lines of code worth of software that makes it work. Knowledge of old technology gets lost -- to make modern computers we first needed older, primitive computers, but now that we only have modern computers no one remembers anymore how to make the older computers -- modern computers are sustaining themselves but once they're gone, we won't know how to make them again, i.e. if we lose computers, we will also lose tools for making computers. This applies on many levels (hardware, operating systems, programming languages and so on).
+**Why concern ourselves with bootstrapping when we already have our systems set up?** Besides the obvious elegance of this whole approach there are many other practical reasons -- as mentioned, some are concerned about "security", some want portability, control and independence -- one of other notable justifications is that we may lose our current technology due to societal [collapse](collapse.md), which is not improbable as it keeps happening throughout history over and over, so many people fear (rightfully so) that if by whatever disaster we lose our current computers, Internet etc., we will also lose with it all modern art, data, software we so painfully developed, digitized books and so on; not talking about the horrors that will follow if we're unable to quickly reestablish our computer networks we are so dependent on. Setting up what we currently have completely from scratch would be extremely difficult, a task for centuries -- just take a while to consider all the activity and knowledge that's required around the globe to create a single computer with all its billions of lines of code worth of software that makes it work. Knowledge of old technology gets lost -- to make modern computers we first needed older, primitive computers, but now that we only have modern computers no one remembers anymore how to make the older computers -- modern computers are sustaining themselves but once they're gone, we won't know how to make them again, i.e. if we lose computers, we will also lose tools for making computers. This applies on many levels (hardware, operating systems, programming languages and so on).
 
 Bootstrapping has to start with some initial prerequisite machine dependent binary code that kickstarts the self-establishing process, i.e. it's not possible to get rid of absolutely ALL binary code and have a pure bootstrappable code that would run on every computer -- that would require making a program that can native run on any computer, which can't be done -- but it is possible to get it to absolute minimum -- let's say a few dozen bytes of machine code that can even be hand-made on paper and can be easily inspected for "safety". This initial binary code is called *bootstrapping binary seed*. This code can be as simple as a mere translator of some extremely simple bytecode (that may consist only of handful of instructions) to the platform's assembly language. There even exists the extreme case of a single instruction computer, but in practice it's not necessary to go as far. The initial binary seed may then typically be used to translate a precompiled bytecode of our system's compiler to native runnable code and voila, we can now happily start compiling whatever we want.