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Using Zig as cross-platform C toolchain

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Re: Using Zig as cross-platform C toolchain

#11

Post by smeenai »

_0w8t wrote: post #8
synergy20 wrote: post #2

I'm almost sold, I checked zig briefly at its home page in the past and never used it. the cross platform build(similar to golang and rust) for c is very interesting. what about the mac-os(or linux,etc) native libraries on windows where you're building the demo code? The 60MB zig compiler and native clang on Windows will not have them, how is that done? Is it totally on clang side?

Apple does not allow to use their SDK on non-Apple hardware. So if you need to use MacOS headers and libraries, the hardware where the compiler runs must be from Apple. Apple has no problem if you run Linux on that and cross-compile from it to Mac. At work we could not for that reason use the same compilation server setup to cross-compile for Linux, MacOS, Windows and ended up with a separated MacPro box for the comp…

VS community edition is free (but not an option for commercial work).

Another Clang-specific way to handle the case insensitivity is by making use of a virtual file system (VFS) overlay. https://github.com/llvm/llvm-project/blob/4976d1fe58f89169ef... demonstrates how that works. (There's no linker equivalent that I'm aware of, so you do have to use the symlinks or something like ciopfs for that; https://github.com/llvm/llvm-project/blob/4976d1fe58f89169ef... is an example of symlink generation.)

Re: Using Zig as cross-platform C toolchain

#12

Post by slimsag »

_0w8t wrote: post #8
synergy20 wrote: post #2

I'm almost sold, I checked zig briefly at its home page in the past and never used it. the cross platform build(similar to golang and rust) for c is very interesting. what about the mac-os(or linux,etc) native libraries on windows where you're building the demo code? The 60MB zig compiler and native clang on Windows will not have them, how is that done? Is it totally on clang side?

Apple does not allow to use their SDK on non-Apple hardware. So if you need to use MacOS headers and libraries, the hardware where the compiler runs must be from Apple. Apple has no problem if you run Linux on that and cross-compile from it to Mac. At work we could not for that reason use the same compilation server setup to cross-compile for Linux, MacOS, Windows and ended up with a separated MacPro box for the comp…

Note however Zig actually provides libSystem.tbd stubs out of the box, so you can cross-compile from any OS to macOS too as long as you only depend on libSystem (the macOS libc.)

If you need the rest of the Apple SDK, then you'd need a sysroot (and face the challenges you described.)

Re: Using Zig as cross-platform C toolchain

#13

Post by slimsag »

RodgerTheGreat wrote: post #3

TIL about clang's -fsanitize=undefined, and immediately discovered and corrected a handful of subtle bugs lurking in one of my projects. Thanks, Zig, and thanks, Clang.

Crazy how often this catches undefined behavior. Compiling GLFW with Zig we've found like ~4 separate UB issues, one I described here[0]

Wish it could default to on with clang, but probably it'd break too many things. Really wonder how many severe issues we'd find just from turning this on by default everywhere, though.

[0] https://devlog.hexops.com/2021/perfecting-glfw-for-zig-and-f...

Re: Using Zig as cross-platform C toolchain

#14

Post by jcelerier »

haberman wrote: post #5

I recently learned that Clang supports this kind of cross-compiling out of the box. https://mcilloni.ovh/2021/02/09/cxx-cross-clang/ The main difference is that Clang does not ship with headers/libraries for different platforms, as Zig appears to do. You need to give Clang a "sysroot" -- a path that has the headers/libraries for the platform you want to compile for. If you create a bunch of sysroots for various archi…

Yes, for instance for ossia score, the sequencer I'm working on which does some runtime compiling of c++ through clang & llvmjit, I ship a sdk for each platform with all the libc, libc++ headers. What a pain it was !

My scripts are the create-sdk-... Here if that can be useful to anyone: https://github.com/ossia/score/tree/master/ci and the SDKs are available at https://github.com/ossia/sdk

Re: Using Zig as cross-platform C toolchain

#15

Post by cyber_kinetist »

emidoots wrote: post #9

"So, a clang wrapper?" is a common thought, so here's how Zig differs from clang out of the box: * Links MachO binaries for Apple Silicon via the custom zld linker it ships. LLVM cannot do this currently. * Provides (deduplicated) libc headers for pretty much every platform, including macOS and glibc/musl. https://github.com/ziglang/zig/tree/master/lib/libc/include * Provides a libc implementation (libSystem for macO…

Does it also work with C++? If so, it seems like a very good alternative compared to the MSVC + clang-cl toolchain in Windows (which you need to install gigabytes of libraries before doing any development).

Also, does it also work with build systems like CMake flawlessly? (I know that you can use Zig as a build system, but I would still want to leverage the ecosystem of C++ libraries compatible with CMake.)

Re: Using Zig as cross-platform C toolchain

#17

Post by shp0ngle »

cube2222 wrote: post #16

There's a great article about using Zig as a cross-platform C toolchain for compiling CGo, to bring easy cross-platform compilation to it, which is usually a pain: https://dev.to/kristoff/zig-makes-go-cross-compilation-just-...

huh

that’s… a great idea.

Re: Using Zig as cross-platform C toolchain

#18

Post by nicoburns »

cyber_kinetist wrote: post #15
emidoots wrote: post #9

"So, a clang wrapper?" is a common thought, so here's how Zig differs from clang out of the box: * Links MachO binaries for Apple Silicon via the custom zld linker it ships. LLVM cannot do this currently. * Provides (deduplicated) libc headers for pretty much every platform, including macOS and glibc/musl. https://github.com/ziglang/zig/tree/master/lib/libc/include * Provides a libc implementation (libSystem for macO…

Does it also work with C++? If so, it seems like a very good alternative compared to the MSVC + clang-cl toolchain in Windows (which you need to install gigabytes of libraries before doing any development). Also, does it also work with build systems like CMake flawlessly? (I know that you can use Zig as a build system, but I would still want to leverage the ecosystem of C++ libraries compatible with CMake.)

I haven't actually used it myself, but I believe yes to both. It wraps clang, and while it's not quite as simple as "just a wrapper" it should be able to do anything that clang can do.

Re: Using Zig as cross-platform C toolchain

#19

Post by nicoburns »

Zig's cross-compilation tooling and C interop is really impressive. I love to see projects that put so much emphasis on solving real-world practical problems like this and implement it so well.

It makes me wonder whether cross-language tooling could be made to work more broadly. It would be awesome if you could have one compiler that would seamlessly compile zig/C/C++/Rust, and perhaps Fortran/ADA too.

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