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go/src/cmd/dist/README
Russ Cox 20a10e7ddd build: require old Go to build new Go (and convert cmd/dist to Go)
This CL introduces the bootstrap requirement that in order to
build the current release (or development version) of Go, you
need an older Go release (1.4 or newer) already installed.
This requirement is the whole point of this CL.

To enforce the requirement, convert cmd/dist from C to Go.

With this bootstrapping out of the way, we can move on to
replacing other, larger C programs like the Go compiler,
the assemblers, and the linker.

See golang.org/s/go15bootstrap for details.

Change-Id: I53fd08ddacf3df9fae94fe2c986dba427ee4a21d
Reviewed-on: https://go-review.googlesource.com/2470
Reviewed-by: Ian Lance Taylor <iant@golang.org>
Reviewed-by: Rob Pike <r@golang.org>
2015-01-10 19:16:00 +00:00

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This program, dist, is the bootstrapping tool for the Go distribution.
As of Go 1.5, dist and other parts of the compiler toolchain are written
in Go, making bootstrapping a little more involved than in the past.
The approach is to build the current release of Go with an earlier one.
The process to install Go 1.x, for x ≥ 5, is:
1. Build cmd/dist with Go 1.4.
2. Using dist, build Go 1.x compiler toolchain with Go 1.4.
3. Using dist, rebuild Go 1.x compiler toolchain with itself.
4. Using dist, build Go 1.x cmd/go (as go_bootstrap) with Go 1.x compiler toolchain.
5. Using go_bootstrap, build the remaining Go 1.x standard library and commands.
NOTE: During the transition from the old C-based toolchain to the Go-based one,
step 2 also builds the parts of the toolchain written in C, and step 3 does not
recompile those.
Because of backward compatibility, although the steps above say Go 1.4,
in practice any release ≥ Go 1.4 but < Go 1.x will work as the bootstrap base.
See golang.org/s/go15bootstrap for more details.
Compared to Go 1.4 and earlier, dist will also take over much of what used to
be done by make.bash/make.bat/make.rc and all of what used to be done by
run.bash/run.bat/run.rc, because it is nicer to implement that logic in Go
than in three different scripting languages simultaneously.