I just want to develop something different. But what? Game, graphics, sound processing?
Surely you'll say Rust! Yep done a lot of things in Rust. But maybe C?
Ohhh... Noooo...
Remember Segmentation Fault?
How are you going to manage depenencies?
OK, So try to use some C library in ZIG! How hard it will be? Let's see.
Try to write somple app using raylib.
$ mkdir ray_test_zig
$ cd ray_test_zig
$ zig init-exe
Got a project. Try to run?
$ zig build run
Yep it's working.
We need to fetch and include raylib somehow.
Zig uses zon to fetch dependencies. Does it work with C libraries? Find out!
We need to provide where the lib is! Here it is:
Create build.zig.zon file.
.{
.name = "ray_test_zig",
.version = "0.0.1",
.dependencies = .{
.raylib = .{
.url = "https://github.com/raysan5/raylib/archive/refs/tags/5.0.tar.gz",
},
},
}
Try to build project?
$ zig build
What it is?
Fetch Packages... raylib... ./ray_test_zig/build.zig.zon:7:20: error: url field is missing corresponding hash field
.url = "https://github.com/raysan5/raylib/archive/refs/tags/5.0.tar.gz",
^~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
note: expected .hash = "1220c28847ca8e8756734ae84355802b764c9d9cf4de057dbc6fc2b15c56e726f27b",
Ok, zon expects a hash, just in case someone will try to hack out computer. Once again:
.{
.name = "ray_test_zig",
.version = "0.0.1",
.dependencies = .{
.raylib = .{
.url = "https://github.com/raysan5/raylib/archive/refs/tags/5.0.tar.gz",
.hash = "1220c28847ca8e8756734ae84355802b764c9d9cf4de057dbc6fc2b15c56e726f27b",
},
},
}
Try once again:
$ zig build
It works! Woooow! That's it?
No! We need to tell zig to include raylib during build!
Now we will edit build.zig. Just above line ~30 we have b.installArtifact(exe);
Before that line we need to add:
const raylib = b.dependency("raylib", .{
.target = target,
.optimize = optimize,
});
exe.installLibraryHeaders(raylib.artifact("raylib"));
exe.linkLibrary(raylib.artifact("raylib"));
We're teling zig where header files are and to link out executable with raylib.
Does it works? Let's check!
$ zig build
OMG! Looks like somethings with raylib was happened. It's compiled?
Let's port an simple example from raylib to zig.
In the src/main.zig:
const std = @import("std");
const ray = @cImport({
@cInclude("raylib.h");
});
pub fn main() !void {
ray.InitWindow(800, 450, "Hey ZIG");
defer ray.CloseWindow();
while (!ray.WindowShouldClose()) {
ray.BeginDrawing();
ray.ClearBackground(ray.RAYWHITE);
ray.DrawText("Congrats! You created your first window!", 190, 200, 20, ray.LIGHTGRAY);
ray.EndDrawing();
}
}
$ zig build
No errors? Great!
$ zig build run
We got the raylib window!
As you can see! Just one line of code and raylib working like native lib!
So yep! Zig can C!
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