Bootstrapping

Definition

Check out the definition from wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bootstrapping to know more about bootstrapping.

Why bootstrapping?

The idea is that when you do a change in the code generation (often for improving the speed) you want to get a compiler that has been compiled with the new code generation to benefit from the changes.

Bootstrapping the compiler

Initial compiler

To start the boostrap process you have to start from a working compiler, this is usually one of the released version. Let's call this compiler ec_original.