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Zig is now self–hosted by default

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Re: Zig is now self–hosted by default

#41

Post by childintime »

kuon wrote: post #3
AndyKelley wrote: post #2

To clarify what this means, since things can get confusing with subtle differences in wordings: * stage1 is when zig is built from C++ code[1] (the "bootstrap" compiler) using system C/C++ compiler toolchain. * stage2 is when zig is built from Zig code[2] using stage1. * stage3 is when zig is rebuilt from the same Zig code[2] using stage2. Before today, zig would give you stage1 by default, and you could opt in to st…

Congratulations. This is an important milestone.

For Andrew it must feel he's now on the home stretch towards 1.0, finally!

Re: Zig is now self–hosted by default

#42

Post by sekao »

dilap wrote: post #37
AndyKelley wrote: post #2

To clarify what this means, since things can get confusing with subtle differences in wordings: * stage1 is when zig is built from C++ code[1] (the "bootstrap" compiler) using system C/C++ compiler toolchain. * stage2 is when zig is built from Zig code[2] using stage1. * stage3 is when zig is rebuilt from the same Zig code[2] using stage2. Before today, zig would give you stage1 by default, and you could opt in to st…

> * Zig's std lib data structures are incredibly useful, especially compared to the C++ STL. I think elaborating on this could make for a very interesting article. :-) (I have a guess already at one item, which is MultiArrayList, something that kind of blew my mind when I first learned about it, and is in my opinion a very impressive testament to both the power and ease of use of Zig's approach to compile-time comput…

I didn't even know about it until today, very impressive. Generic SoA in less than 500 lines of userland code...

https://github.com/ziglang/zig/blob/master/lib/std/multi_arr...

Re: Zig is now self–hosted by default

#44

Post by rnhmjoj »

I never understood why "self-hosting" is considered a good thing. Sure, the compiler developers can write in their favorite language and I guess it means the language is stable enough to be used in a complex project; however requiring an (older) compiler to build the compiler seems a significant complication for software distributions.

You either have to set up an ever increasing chain of compilers, as the complexity of the language and the features required to build the compiler grows, or rely on pre-existing binaries. Either way, it seems like a nightmare compared to keeping it in plain old C and building with any compiler of your choice. Just Imagine if any project did this, like, building Firefox now requires an existing Firefox installation.

Re: Zig is now self–hosted by default

#46

Post by flohofwoe »

badpun wrote: post #20
anonymoushn wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can use it today!

Is there any IDE support? Any debugger?

VSCode works well. There's a handful plugins which integrate the Zig language server, and any gdb/lldb frontend plugin works for debugging (not sure about the msvc debugger that's used on Windows in the MS C/C++ extension).

Re: Zig is now self–hosted by default

#47

Post by nindalf »

rnhmjoj wrote: post #44

I never understood why "self-hosting" is considered a good thing. Sure, the compiler developers can write in their favorite language and I guess it means the language is stable enough to be used in a complex project; however requiring an (older) compiler to build the compiler seems a significant complication for software distributions. You either have to set up an ever increasing chain of compilers, as the complexity…

You don’t know if the product you’re building is any good unless you’re using it yourself.

Re: Zig is now self–hosted by default

#48

Post by nicoburns »

rnhmjoj wrote: post #44

I never understood why "self-hosting" is considered a good thing. Sure, the compiler developers can write in their favorite language and I guess it means the language is stable enough to be used in a complex project; however requiring an (older) compiler to build the compiler seems a significant complication for software distributions. You either have to set up an ever increasing chain of compilers, as the complexity…

> Either way, it seems like a nightmare compared to keeping it in plain old C and building with any compiler of your choice. Just Imagine if any project did this, like, building Firefox now requires an existing Firefox installation.

But this is exactly the same for C! Building C compiler requires an existing C compiler. C compilers are admittedly more widely available at the moment, but that probably won't be the case forever. Languages like zig aim to supplant C. How are they supposed to do that when they're directly dependent on C?

Re: Zig is now self–hosted by default

#49

Post by hardwaregeek »

rnhmjoj wrote: post #44

I never understood why "self-hosting" is considered a good thing. Sure, the compiler developers can write in their favorite language and I guess it means the language is stable enough to be used in a complex project; however requiring an (older) compiler to build the compiler seems a significant complication for software distributions. You either have to set up an ever increasing chain of compilers, as the complexity…

I believe Andy noted that it's way easier to find contributors for the self hosted compiler. If someone is passionate about the language, they want to write the language, not C++. And specifically for languages like Rust and Zig, the explicit orthodoxy is that the language is a better successor to C++/C. If you're spending your time telling people that they shouldn't write C++/C and should instead write your language, you probably should put your money where your mouth is and switch the compiler to your own language. Note that this is significantly less common with high level languages. Ruby, Python, even Swift are not bootstrapped. That's because none of these are claiming to take over the systems software niche and therefore don't need to prove anything by bootstrapping.

Re: Zig is now self–hosted by default

#50

Post by damagednoob »

rnhmjoj wrote: post #44

I never understood why "self-hosting" is considered a good thing. Sure, the compiler developers can write in their favorite language and I guess it means the language is stable enough to be used in a complex project; however requiring an (older) compiler to build the compiler seems a significant complication for software distributions. You either have to set up an ever increasing chain of compilers, as the complexity…

For me, compilers tend to be complex so it's a way to show that it can be done. Also, dogfooding[1].

[1]: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eating_your_own_dog_food

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