| This program, dist, is the bootstrapping tool for the Go distribution. |
| |
| As of Go 1.5, dist and other parts of the compiler toolchain are written |
| in Go, making bootstrapping a little more involved than in the past. |
| The approach is to build the current release of Go with an earlier one. |
| |
| The process to install Go 1.x, for x ≥ 20, is: |
| |
| 1. Build cmd/dist with Go 1.17.13. |
| 2. Using dist, build Go 1.x compiler toolchain with Go 1.17.13. |
| 3. Using dist, rebuild Go 1.x compiler toolchain with itself. |
| 4. Using dist, build Go 1.x cmd/go (as go_bootstrap) with Go 1.x compiler toolchain. |
| 5. Using go_bootstrap, build the remaining Go 1.x standard library and commands. |
| |
| NOTE: During the transition from the old C-based toolchain to the Go-based one, |
| step 2 also builds the parts of the toolchain written in C, and step 3 does not |
| recompile those. |
| |
| Because of backward compatibility, although the steps above say Go 1.17.13, |
| in practice any release ≥ Go 1.17.13 but < Go 1.x will work as the bootstrap base. |
| |
| See golang.org/s/go15bootstrap for more details. |
| |
| Compared to Go 1.4 and earlier, dist will also take over much of what used to |
| be done by make.bash/make.bat/make.rc and all of what used to be done by |
| run.bash/run.bat/run.rc, because it is nicer to implement that logic in Go |
| than in three different scripting languages simultaneously. |
