@Timpostma

A chicken egg tool is a tool, in this case the GCC compiler, which you need in your GNU Linux Operating System to compile your programs.

The GCC compiler needs to be compiled first.

This means that you need another C compiler, to compile your GCC compiler.
The other C compiler will need to reside in another Operating System.

In this specific example of building a GNU Linux multi tasking Operating System from the MS-DOS single tasking operating system, I used the Turbo C compiler, which was written by Borland. The Turbo C compiler, is a proprietary Closed Source compiler, which is delivered as a executable, not in source code.

Armed with the Turbo C compiler, I ran the following command sequence for compiling GCC
./configure
make test
# this runs the assembler program too
make

I did not run 'make install' because GCC needs to be installed in GNU Linux. I also used switches so that a Linux ELF Binary executable was created, not a MS-DOS executable binary.

The last step was to do a raw write of the GCC binary to the Linux file system.

#GNU #GCC #compiler #ELF #OperatingSystem #programming #technology #Freedom #100percent #Full #free #software #UNIX #vi #mathematics #reg #ex #regular #expressions #gettext #man #pages #OpenSource #files #pipes

Distributions are interwoven with the GNU principles.
Before distributions I would have to download the GNU program Source Code one by one, then cross compile (GCC for example) them.
Once chicken egg tools were cross compiled I could start with native
./configure; make; make test; make install

Quote
Specifically, free software means users have the four essential freedoms: (0) to run the program, (1) to study and change the program in source code form, (2) to redistribute exact copies, and (3) to distribute modified versions.
^Z

These are important pillars of Free Software

https://www.gnu.org/gnu/gnu.html

#GNU #OperatingSystem #programming #technology #Freedom #100percent #Full #free #software #UNIX #vi #mathematics #reg #ex #regular #expressions #gettext #man #pages #OpenSource #files #pipes