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Daniele Cocca edited this page Apr 29, 2021 · 55 revisions

Where can I ask questions

This wiki page lists Zig community gathering places where you can ask questions.

https://github.com/ziglang/zig/wiki/Community

Where is the documentation for the Zig standard library?

Here it is: Standard Library Documentation

However, please note the remaining issues with generated documentation.

You can also:

  • Browse the stdlib code to see what public functions and types are available.
  • Check out the community and ask questions if you need help. Newcomers are always welcome!

Zig website uses this script to generate documentation.

Why does Zig force me to use spaces instead of tabs?

Because the tooling is not yet stable.

zig fmt accepts and converts tabs to spaces, \r\n to \n, as well as many other transformations of non-canonical to canonical style.

The Zig language accepts hard tabs and carriage returns. The self-hosted compiler implements the Zig language correctly; accepting hard tabs and carriage returns. However, the self-hosted compiler is not yet complete, and what people are using in reality is the stage1 compiler, which does not accept hard tabs.

Hard tabs are not accepted by stage1 because:

  • It doesn't need to. All of the self-hosted compiler source is formatted with zig fmt and so there are no hard tabs. The complexity of dealing with hard tabs need not be present in stage1.
  • zig fmt is not fully stable yet; use of zig fmt is not yet ubiquitous. If stage1 accepted hard tabs, then in practice, there would be accidental mixing of tabs and spaces.

If you feel the need to spend any more of your precious hours left on this Earth thinking about tabs and spaces, see The Hard Tabs Issue.

Why does zig fmt have no configuration options?

The biggest reason to enforce an indentation and line endings is that it eliminates energy spent on debating what the standard should be, since the standard is enforced by the compiler.

The issue of other whitespace characters has been discussed too, and similar decisions were made. Zig aims to offer only one way to do things whenever possible. This makes the cognitive load lower for programmers and keeps the compiler code base simpler and easier to understand.

In the words of the Go community,

gofmt is nobody's favorite, yet gofmt is everybody's favorite.

Why are some zig command options prefixed with - and others with -- ?

They were copied verbatim from other projects rather than trying to be self-consistent. The Command Line Interface is not finalized. We can make sure it is consistent and intuitive in an organization pass before releasing 1.0.

How do I make zig fmt skip a range of source lines?

zig fmt will parse comments for special directives.

In this example all code between // zig fmt: off and // zig fmt: on will be excluded from formatting:

// zig fmt: off
const matrix = Matrix{1.0, 0.0, 0.0, 0.0,
                      0.0, 1.0, 0.0, 0.0,
                      0.0, 0.0, 1.0, 0.0,
                      0.0, 0.0, 0.0, 1.0};
// zig fmt: on

Explain this error: Unable to create builtin.zig: access denied

When building or compiling with Zig a build-cache is used. This particular error indicates filesystem security has prevented access to a directory or file used in the global build-cache. Fixing permissions should solve the issue.

note: It is safe to manually remove cache directories when no zig compiler process is active.

The build cache can be found in the following locations unless overridden with command-line options:

TYPE OS DIRECTORY NOTE
global all $XDG_CACHE_HOME/zig if env is set
$HOME/.cache/zig
Windows %LOCALAPPDATA%\zig
local all $PWD/zig-cache

Why is switching on []u8 (strings) not supported?

In summary, Jimmi made a good attempt at implementing a StringSwitch in comptime and concluded that good old chained if statements were fastest.

For details see match.zig .

Are there any good examples of advanced internals development with Zig (specifically stage1 bug fixes)?

Zig stage1 compiler is currently implemented in c++ and will probably remain that way for some time. If you want to see some good examples of fixing a bug in the stage1 compiler:

I would like to use --verbose-ir but it is really loud. How can I focus the compiler?

  1. The first step is to reduce your code to isolate the issue as much as possible.
  2. The second step is to setup your code to not require an executable with main() or similar. Instead we define an export function to force the compiler into thinking the function must be compiled. Note this means you are probably going to have to use zig build-obj instead of zig build-exe or zig run.
  3. The third step is to define a skeleton panic handler to override the more functional default.

Here is a reduction boiler plate. Note little tricks like using easily seen variable names or literal values can help. For example, a is a difficult variable to grep for. And the value 99 is much easier to find than 0:

export fn entry() void {
    var hello: usize = 99;
}

pub fn panic(msg: []const u8, error_return_trace: ?*@import("std").builtin.StackTrace) noreturn {
    @breakpoint();
    unreachable;
}

and search for fn entry (you'll see it twice because zig first produces "IR0" from source then analyzes IR0 and produces IR). Either or both may be of interest depending on the issue at hand:

zig build-obj reduction.zig --verbose-ir |& less

Why was varargs replaced with tuples?

see https://github.com/ziglang/zig/issues/208#issuecomment-393777148

Why do I get illegal instruction when using with zig cc to build C code?

When compiling without -O2 or -O3, Zig infers Debug Mode. Zig passes -fsanitize=undefined -fsanitize-trap=undefined to Clang in this mode. This causes Undefined Behavior to cause an Illegal Instruction. You can then run the code in a debugger and figure out why UB is being invoked.

From the UBSAN docs:

UndefinedBehaviorSanitizer is not expected to produce false positives. If you see one, look again; most likely it is a true positive!

However you can suppress UBSAN. Here is how to affect the build mode that Zig selects for C code:

  • -O2 or -O3: ReleaseFast
  • -O2 or -O3 and -fsanitize=undefined: ReleaseSafe
  • -Os: ReleaseSmall
  • -Og or no optimization flags: Debug

You can also pass -fno-sanitize=undefined.

How to add command-line args to zig build run sub-command?

usage

zig build run -- one two three

edit build.zig 

const run_cmd = exe.run();
if (b.args) |args| run_cmd.addArgs(args);

How to tie a zig build run sub-command to custom -D style options

usage

zig build run -Dhello=false
zig build run -Dhello=true

edit build.zig 

exe.addBuildOption(bool, "hello", hello);

src/main.zig

const std = @import("std");

pub fn main() anyerror!void {
    const options = @import("build_options");
    if (options.hello) {
        std.debug.warn("Hello.\n", .{});
    } else {
        std.debug.warn("All your base are belong to us.\n", .{});
    }
}

How do i use packages?

First, some basics:

  • zig packages are just zig source trees, requiring a root file
  • packages are imported with @import("package-name") without the .zig extension
  • packages have the same visibility rules as other source files, they just don't need to be in a relative directory to your own source tree
  • each package has their own dependencies, so packages might use a same-named package that is backed by different source files

this example shows how to add two packages "first" and "second", where "second" depends on a package "first", which is different:

.
├── first      /path/to/one/first.zig
└── second     /path/to/second.zig
    └── first  /path/to/a/different/first.zig

zig build-exe and other direct commands:

zig build-exe \
    --pkg-begin \
        first \
        /path/to/one/first.zig \
    --pkg-end \
    --pkg-begin \
    second \
    /path/to/second.zig \
        --pkg-begin \
          first \
          /path/to/a/different/first.zig \
        --pkg-end \
    --pkg-end

zig build

const exe = b.addExecutable(...);

// simple package
exe.addPackage(std.build.Pkg {
    .name = "first",
    .path = "/path/to/one/first.zig",
});

// with deps
exe.addPackage(std.build.Pkg {
    .name = "second",
    .path = "/path/to/second.zig",
    .dependencies = &[_]std.build.Pkg {
        std.build.Pkg {
            .name = "first",
            .path = "/path/to/a/different/first.zig",
        },
    }
});
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