Time has already come to call upon your expertise!
When I try to bootstrap the public release generic javac
(./scripts/bootstrap), the compiler reports the following error:

javac/com/sun/tools/javac/v8/JavaCompiler.java:109: reference to
Symtab is ambiguous, both class
com.sun.tools.javac.v8.comp.Symtab in com.sun.tools.javac.v8.comp
and class com.sun.tools.javac.v8.code.Symtab in
com.sun.tools.javac.v8.code match
            Symtab syms = Symtab.instance(context);

plus 99 others that seem to be direct consequences (uses of
symtabs). For some reason the bootstrap compiler seems to think
that there is a Symtab class in .../comp/ as well as in .../code/
.

I've really tried to do things the way the README file says I
should. I have a 1.4.0 compiler in $J2SE14 .