| 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 ≥ 28, is: |
| |
| 1. Build cmd/dist with Go 1.26.0. |
| 2. Using dist, build Go 1.x compiler toolchain and Go 1.x cmd/go (as go_bootstrap) with Go 1.26.0. |
| 3. Using go_bootstrap, rebuild Go 1.x compiler toolchain with itself. |
| 4. Using go_bootstrap, build the remaining Go 1.x standard library and commands. |
| |
| Because of backward compatibility, although the steps above say Go 1.26.0, |
| in practice any release ≥ Go 1.26.0 but < Go 1.x will work as the bootstrap base. |
| Releases ≥ Go 1.x are very likely to work as well. |
| |
| See go.dev/s/go15bootstrap for more details about the original bootstrap |
| and go.dev/issue/54265 for details about later bootstrap version bumps. |
