Rust GCC Code Generator "rustc_codegen_gcc" Can Now Bootstrap Rustc

A huge milestone has been reached in the rustc_codegen_gcc effort that aims to offer a GCC-based Rust compiler alternative to the LLVM-based official Rust compiler.

The rustc_codegen_gcc project that builds upon libgccjit for offering ahead-of-time code generation for Rustc is now able to finally bootstrap Rustc itself!

Thanks to the latest work on rustc_codegen-gcc, it can successfully compile rustc itself. That resulting rustc compiler was then working enough at least to compile a simple Rust "Hello World!" program. While an exciting milestone, much work still lays ahead including around SIMD support and other optimizations.

The hope with rustc_codegen_gcc is that it will be able to take advantage of GCC's more diverse CPU architecture / platform support compared to LLVM with the official Rust compiler. It will also be interesting from the performance aspect with how this implementation and GCC's different optimizations compare. Plus some just preferring GCC over LLVM based compilers for code licenses and other aspects.

The latest rustc_codegen_gcc report can be read here by developer Antoni Boucher.