1.2.3

## Bootstrapping

Bootstrapping is the process of building up functionality of the system until all Ruby code can be executed. There are seven stages to the bootstrap process:

1. VM: The virtual machine is able to load and execute bytecode, send messages (i.e. look up and execute methods), and all primitive functions are available, but not yet hooked up as Ruby methods.

   The Class class has to be manually set up this early in the process by setting its class to be itself and its superclass to be Module. In addition to Class and Module, a couple of other base classes are created here including Object, Tuple, LookupTable, and MethodTable.

   Now that classes can be defined, 35 or so built in classes are told to initialize themselves, symbols for top level methods (:object_id, :call, :protected, etc) are created, basic exceptions are defined, and primitives are registered. Finally IO gets hooked up. Also at this stage, several fundamental Ruby methods are bound to primitives.

   At this point there is enough defined behavior to begin to load up the rest of the runtime kernel which is all defined in ruby. This has to be done in several passes as the language grows.

2. alpha: This starts the loading of Ruby code. The ability to open classes and modules and define methods exists. The minimum functionality to support the following methods is implemented in kernel/alpha.rb:

   attr_reader :sym attr_writer :sym attr_accessor :sym private :sym protected :sym module_function :sym include mod

   Also, it is possible to raise exceptions and cause the running process to exit. This stage lays the foundation for the next two stages.

3. bootstrap: This stage continues to add the minimum functionality to support loading platform and common. The primitive functions are added for most of the kernel classes.

4. platform: The FFI (foreign function interface) system is implemented and Ruby method interfaces to platform-specific functions are created. Once this is set up, platform specific things such as pointers, file access, math, and POSIX commands are attached.

5. common: The vast majority of the Ruby core library classes are implemented. The Ruby core classes are kept as implementation-neutral as possible. Also, most of the functionality for Rubinius specific classes is added.

6. delta: Final versions of methods like #attr_reader, etc. are added. Also, implementation-specific versions of methods that override the versions provided in common are added.

7. loader: The compiled version of kernel/loader.rb is run.

   The final stage sets up the life cycle of a ruby process. It starts by connecting the VM to the system, sets up load paths, and reads customization scripts from the home directory. It traps signals, and processes command line arguments.

   After that, it either runs the script passed to it from the command line or boots up the interactive ruby shell. When that finishes, it runs any at_exit blocks that had been registered, finalizes all objects, and exits.

## Load Order

The files in the kernel directories bootstrap, platform, common, and delta, implement the respective bootstrapping stages above. The order in which these directories are loaded is specified in runtime/index.

When an rbc file is loaded, code at the script level and in class or module bodies is executed. For instance, when loading

    class SomeClass
      attr_accessor :value
    end

the call to #attr_accessor will be run. This requires that any code called in script, class, or module bodies be loaded before the file that calls the code. The kernel/alpha.rb defines most of the code that will be needed at the script or module level. However, other load order dependencies exist between some of the platform, common, delta, and compiler files.

These load order dependencies are addressed by the load_order.txt file located in each of the kernel/** directories. If you modify code that adds a load order dependency, you must edit the load_order.txt files to place the depended on file above the file that depends on it. Also, if you add a new file to one of the kernel directories, you must add the file name to the load_order.txt file in that directory. These files are copied to the appropriate runtime/** directories during build. During each of the bootstrap stages above, the VM loads the files listed in load_order.txt in order.