alt Hacker NewsIs offering an alternative to LLVM not precisely one of the purposes of the rustc_codegen_cranelift backend [0]? It still doesn't have 100% feature parity, but I believe it's able to fully bootstrap the compiler at this point. Writing a rustc backend isn't trivial, but it isn't as impossible as you make it out to be.
I’m not sure what I wrote to give the impression that Rust was unable to write a compiler, let alone implied it was impossible. Rust is certainly full featured enough to write a very well performing compiler. I find my comment more an indictment, and viewed uncharitably an accusation of hypocrisy, of the language org’s oversight that they are so heavily invested in LLVM (but if I was leveling such an accusation it would not be just because it’s a C++ project)
My comment was focused on the fact that Rust is not using a Rust compiler and therefore is relying on deep and complex C++ infrastructure while working to supplant the same at the lowest levels of the computing stack.
I was also commenting, up the thread, in a chain of comments about a perceived shortcoming of Rust’s implementation (i.e. it’s not being bootstrapped) and why some people view that as a negative.