Compilation ancestry of javac?

[Eric Lefevre-Ardant]

Hi everyone,

I am preparing a presentation for the Devoxx conference in Paris, and I was
hoping to present a slide of how javac is compiled.
Alex Buckley suggested that this might be the right place to get more
information. Feel free to point me to some other place, though.

Specifically, my goal is to establish if javac is always compiled using the
previous version of javac. That seems to be the case when looking at the
documentation of recent JDKs (my main source is
https://blogs.oracle.com/jjg/entry/building_javac_for_jdk7).

   - can someone confirmed that this has always been the case ?
   - how far does this go back? javac v1.0 ? v0.9.2 ?
   - finally, how was the bootstrap (not coded in Java) version of javac
   coded? in C? oak? shell script?

My guess is that, if I wanted to go back that far, then in theory I'd need
a Solaris machine from 1995 or so, with the appropriate version of cc.

   - can anyone confirm this?
   - anyone knows what version of SunOS/cc/some other compiler would be
   required?
   - anyone knows whether that bootstrap code would be available? (via
   legal means)

My goal is to illustrate a point on compiler by showing how far back you
could go on javac, if you wanted to build a "pure" version (that is, not
based on another javac).

Many thanks for any help you might provide,

Eric
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