New Funtoo Project: Evolved Bootstrap

[drobbins]

I want to announce a new Funtoo project that we're calling "Evolved Bootstrap".

Here's the idea. Imagine you have access to a computer. It's not running Funtoo or even Gentoo, and it may even not truly be a Linux system. But there's a C compiler on the system. Now, imagine there was an easy way to build Funtoo entirely from source code -- even for a completely different CPU architecture (ARM, PowerPC) that you are currently running. No need to download a stage3 -- everything is fully bootstrapped, entirely from source code. The Funtoo system literally emerges from nothing before your eyes, rather than relying on any pre-built download from Funtoo.

This is what is meant by evolved bootstrap, and it is also notable in that we are doing this as a community effort from the start, so we are going to be building this together.

As a start, we are going to get familiar with "CLFS", or "Cross Linux From Scratch". Linux From Scratch and the LFS ecosystem is a fantastic community project that documents how to build a complete Linux system "from scratch", as evolved bootstrap will do. It is a series of manual steps, whereas evolved bootstrap will be automated. However, I do not want to lose the positive qualities that the LFS community has established in their projects -- providing excellent living documentation on what steps are needed, and why.

We welcome you to join this effort as we get started. Please see https://www.funtoo.org/Evolved_Bootstrap for more information and join us in the #bootstrap channel in Funtoo Discord.