Bootstrappable Builds: How and Why

I am working on a project that will be like a whole environment bootstrapped from the smallest possible beginning. I thought a hex-to-binary converter like hex0 was too much like machine code, and I wanted everything to be source code, so I chose to instead start with a super simple interpreted language that is described in english and the user is supposed to write an interpreter for it themselves in any way they want. This way I connect the human to the computer using the language of the human which I thought felt better and easier to understand. This super simple interpreted language then builds a super simple RISC-V assembler. Here I came up with a nice technique where the functions in the assembler are called through pointers, which makes them replacable while the asesmbler is running. So as soon as the assembler has compiled a better version of one of its own functions, that function is then replaced with the better version while the asesmbler is running and it continues to compile the rest of the code which can then use the new features. So it evolves without having to restart.

> The hex0 program provides a way to turn a string of hexadecimal text into a binary with those bytes. I'll use this to ask for an explanation about the fundamental idea: How is hex text better than a binary blob? Both need detailed knowledge to understand; both need a tool to display (reading ASCII or binary), either of which could be compromised in a "trusting trust" sense. It seems to me that the actually important aspects of the initial "seed" are its size (larger is harder to verify) and that the language used (whether it is Lisp, binary machine code or whatever) has rigorously defined semantics. (Orthogonal to that, you'd want to store everything, seed and the rest, on a medium that cannot hide anything from you, and use that as the source. But that applies to all approaches.)

We bootstrapped our 100% deterministic and quorum-signed LLVM/musl container/native distribution this way from day 1 thanks to the incredible work of this team. Bootstrappable builds unlocked stagex, which unlocks remotely attestable boots that can walk the trust chain from a live server boot all the way back to hex0. https://stagex.tools https://codeberg.org/stagex https://distrust.co/blog/enclaveos.html https://caution.co/

Would love to see someone try to automate the bootstrap chain from a working C89 compiler to Rust. At this point I think current LLMs are able help these incredible feats of bootstrapping as they can grind out the impossibly long built times over multiple days/weeks. I am very optimistic for deterministic builds in general.

Are chain-of-trust attacks real? Is it necessary to make so much effort to avoid what supposedly never happened?