[wahern]

I don't know about the specific motivations for this project, but if you're curious about why work like this might have serious real-world relevance beyond scratching an itch, idle exploration, or meeting a research paper quota, you can look to similar work and literature:

GNU Mes: https://www.gnu.org/software/mes/

Stage0: https://bootstrapping.miraheze.org/wiki/Stage0

Ribbit (same authors): https://github.com/udem-dlteam/ribbit

stage0-posix: https://github.com/oriansj/stage0-posix

Bootstrappable Builds: https://bootstrappable.org/

See also this LWN article about bootstrappable and reproducible builds: https://lwn.net/Articles/841797/ It contains a plethora of interesting links.