What is a bootstrap method?

Question

I have been reading this presentation about java8 lambdas implementation http://fr.slideshare.net/czechscala/java-8-under-the-hood

LambdaMetaFactory cont

Answer 1

There are just two methods in the class: https://docs.oracle.com/javase/8/docs/api/java/lang/invoke/LambdaMetafactory.html

metafactory() and altMetafactory(). Both mention to be a "bootstrap method for invokedynamic call sites".

My understanding is that code which implements the handling of the invokedynamic op code eventually uses one of the two when the target of the invocation is a lambda expression.

The term "bootstrapping" in this context means that it prepares everything necessary to actually execute the job later.