I could imagine bootstrapping via Bell Labs Unix from the 90's would be more authentic, yet demanding LFS experience. I wonder how far back computer historians could bootstrap up to a modern compiler for integrity and verification purposes?

https://www.owlfolio.org/research/bootstrapping-trust-in-compilers/

https://www.theregister.com/2025/11/07/unix_fourth_edition_tape_rediscovered/

[–] racketlauncher831@lemmy.ml 2 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

Not far if you dig out the last C compiler written in assembly by hand. Use that to bootstrap GCC, possibly.

[–] ruffsl@programming.dev 1 points 2 weeks ago

Not sure if something like that would even support x86 or C99, so would probably still need an older mainframe and early GCC source tree. Could probably get by with a virtual emulator for the former.