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Zig: Build System Reworked

ziglang.org

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Re: Zig: Build System Reworked

#131

Post by Philpax »

kllrnohj wrote: post #115
NewsaHackO wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> bun seems to be committed to slop rust already. so, with their ethic, maybe we should just disassociate them from zig and let them go realize their slop dreams? Closing your eyes and pretending a problem does not exist is the a good solution. The fact of the matter is one of the biggest projects that used Zig thought that the devX was so bad that they opted to rewrite their entire 1M LOC project into a different la…

> The fact of the matter is one of the biggest projects that used Zig thought that the devX was so bad It's unlikely to be just a devex issue. The fact of the matter is that a memory unsafe language is an extremely tough sell today, and companies that have a security team at all have likely already made or are planning on making policies like https://chromium.googlesource.com/chromium/src/+/master/docs... There's a r…

I would argue that memory safety is part of devex: it's just one less thing you have to be constantly vigilant about.

Re: Zig: Build System Reworked

#132

Post by Philpax »

pron wrote: post #125
Philpax wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would be very surprised to see a large Rust codebase being harder to maintain than a large Zig codebase. The former makes it much easier to maintain invariants at scale.

Neither has been battle-tested at the relevant scale.

What kind of scale are you thinking of?

Re: Zig: Build System Reworked

#133

Post by ozgrakkurt »

ozgrakkurt wrote: post #130
epolanski wrote: post #5

This sounds like great news, Zig's compilation times are already terrific and this is going to only make them better.

Just creating a file with dummy test like if (2 * 2 != 5) { @panic("fail"); } And running `zig test file.zig -OReleaseSafe` takes a couple seconds on my computer. It also keeps taking the same amount of time every time I do it when I modify that file. Using 0.16 (or master) version so my toolchain isn't old and I'm on linux. Zig is super nice to use as a language but the compiler/stdlib isn't developed conservatively…

Also another point. I have some zig projects from couple of months back and they all have build.zig/build.zig.zon. I tried to copy that to the new dummy project I did and of course the API changed and that is broken now (just 15 lines of build.zig code).

This kind of thing just feels unacceptable considering I don't really see ANY improvement on the issues I had from back then.

Also had a similar baffling experience when I last tried to come back to writing Zig. The std.time.Instant or similar API that also exists in rust and most other languages was move to the new Io interface and they also completely removed that std.time.Instant code.

Overall it feels like people developing the tool don't respect the people using the tool. C++ or even Rust are much less enjoyable languages to write compared to Zig so it is really sad that it is not possible to actually use Zig for me.

Re: Zig: Build System Reworked

#134

Post by AlienRobot »

biffgiff wrote: post #81

Why would I want to use this over, say, Node.js and TypeScript?

What?

You can't run Node on embedded systems, because there isn't enough memory.

A compiled zig program can be only several kilobytes with no depedenencies.

Array access programmed in low-level languages can be optimized with SIMD and parallelization, which will be orders of magnitude faster than the same thing on Javascript. Text processing, image manipulation, video processing, hashing, etc.

There is like infinite reasons to not use Javascript.

Re: Zig: Build System Reworked

#135

Post by pron »

Philpax wrote: post #132
pron wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Neither has been battle-tested at the relevant scale.

What kind of scale are you thinking of?

By the time C++ and Java were as old as Rust is today there were thousands of programs that over 1MLOC that had been maintained for at least five years. Rust is a rather old language, yet I doubt there are even hundreds of Rust programs over 1MLOC.

Re: Zig: Build System Reworked

#137

Post by dmit »

pron wrote: post #127
sourcegrift wrote: post #96

Would someone tell a rust user why they should and should not try zig?

I don't think Rust users are relevant here. It primarily comes down to personal preferences, and since Zig and Rust are so different, some will be drawn to Rust and others to Zig. If you really like a language and it suits your needs, be it Rust or any other, there's no need to look to switch. I think that the audience Zig is aimed at is low-level programmers who haven't taken a liking to Rust, which is the majority…

.....Did you just complain about Rust's "lower adoption" compared to C++, immediately following it by "Zig, on the other hand :eyes_emoji:"

Re: Zig: Build System Reworked

#138

Post by pjmlp »

metaltyphoon wrote: post #104
bbkane wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I thank Go for this. Go's compilation times seemed to inspire other language devs

Go changed something, not sure if 20 or 21, where it will download the Go compiler of all your third-party which don’t match yours. It slows things down.

Yeah, not a fan of the idea that now the standard library is distributed as source code and packages are compiled on demand.

Re: Zig: Build System Reworked

#139

Post by tasuki »

itishappy wrote: post #93
archargelod wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> For the rare exceptions, I make a C lib The problem is that most people using Python don't have enough expertise in C to do the same. It also kinda destroys the argument that Python is good if your solution for performance is to use a different language alongside it.

The argument is that the ergonomics of using Python are worth the squeeze of learning two languages. Are the ergonomics of using Zig really enough to justify replacing Python on the happy path, or would it end up replacing just C?

I find Python extremely unergonomical. Sure, it's nice to read (pseudocode, yay!) and sure, its library ecosystem is beyond amazing.

But... the LSPs I've tried (and I've tried a bunch!) are all atrocious: false positives and false negatives galore. Perhaps I'm spoiled by LSPs from languages with better type systems. Our code is strewn with (to me) mysterious comments such as `# NOQA 1234` which my colleague uses to make his Python tooling work with the codebase. I'm used to languages like Elm or Gleam in which a LSP error means there is an actual problem with your code, and a lack of a LSP error means the code will compile and run.

Re: Zig: Build System Reworked

#140

Post by pron »

dmit wrote: post #137
pron wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think Rust users are relevant here. It primarily comes down to personal preferences, and since Zig and Rust are so different, some will be drawn to Rust and others to Zig. If you really like a language and it suits your needs, be it Rust or any other, there's no need to look to switch. I think that the audience Zig is aimed at is low-level programmers who haven't taken a liking to Rust, which is the majority…

.....Did you just complain about Rust's "lower adoption" compared to C++, immediately following it by "Zig, on the other hand :eyes_emoji:"

No. I "complained" that Rust is too similar to C++ (which for some is the attraction, and for others not so much) while Zig isn't.
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