Zig self hosted compiler is now capable of building itself

A big achievement for any decently sized language. Nice work devs :)

Hello HN! Here is some context to decorate this announcement:

The Zig self-hosted compiler codebase consists of 197,549 lines of code.

There are several different backends, each at varying levels of completion. Here is how many behavior tests are passing:

       LLVM: 1101/1138 (97%)
       WASM:  919/1138 (81%)
          C:  740/1138 (65%)
     x86_64:  725/1138 (64%)
        arm:  490/1138 (43%)
    aarch64:  411/1138 (36%)

As you might guess, the one that this milestone is celebrating is the LLVM backend, which is now able to compile the compiler itself, despite 3% of the behavior tests not yet passing.

The new compiler codebase, which is written in Zig instead of C++, uses significantly less memory, and represents a modest performance improvement. There are 5 more upcoming compiler milestones which will have a more significant impact on compilation speed. I talked about this in detail last weekend at the Zig meetup in Milan, Italy[1].

There are 3 main things needed before we can ship this new compiler to everyone.

1. bug fixes

2. improved compile errors

3. implement the remaining runtime safety checks

If you're looking forward to giving it a spin, subscribe to [this issue](https://github.com/ziglang/zig/issues/89) to be notified when it is landed in master branch.

Edit: The talk recording about upcoming compiler milestones is uploaded now [1]

[1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AqDdWEiSwMM

I think Zig’s compatibility with C is such a valuable feature.

I also wish we could rewrite everything in a modern language, but the reality is that we can’t and that if we could, it would take a LONG time. The ability to start new projects, or extend existing ones, with a modern and more ergonomic language—Zig—and be able to seamlessly work with C is incredible.

I look forward to the self-hosted compiler being complete, and hopefully a package manager in the future. I’d really like to start using Zig for more projects.

Zig as the “Kotlin of C” makes it very appealing. Kotlin has seen fantastic adoption in JVM projects because you can convert files one at a time from .java to .kt, with only a modicum of one-time build system shenanigans up front. Then your team can gain experience gradually, fill in missing pieces like linters over time, all without redesigning your software.

What zig offers is even better - because zig included a CC, you can actually reduce complexity with zig by getting a single compiler version for all platforms, rather than a fixed zig + each platform’s cc. And with it, trivially easy cross-platform builds - even with existing C code. That’s cool! Go has excellent cross-compilation, but Go with C, not so much.

Rust is a powerful tool, but it’s a complex ecosystem unto itself - both conceptually and practically. It has great interoperability frameworks, but the whole set of systems comes at a substantial learning cost. Plus, porting an existing software design to Rust can be a challenge. It’s more like the “scala of C” if we’re trying to stretch the analogy past the breaking point.

The "Kotlin of C", what a beautiful metaphor!