The main problem that motivated these changes is that global constants
which are referenced by pointer would not be emitted into the binary.
This happened because `semaDecl` did not add `codegen_decl` tasks for
global constants, instead relying on the constant values being copied as
necessary. However when the global constants are referenced by pointer,
they need to be sent to the linker to be emitted.
After making global const arrays, structs, and unions get emitted, this
uncovered a latent issue: the anonymous decls that they referenced would
get garbage collected (via `deleteUnusedDecl`) even though they would
later be referenced by the global const.
In order to solve this problem, I introduced `anon_work_queue` which is
the same as `work_queue` except a lower priority. The `codegen_decl`
task for anon decls goes into the `anon_work_queue` ensuring that the
owner decl gets a chance to mark its anon decls as alive before they are
possibly deleted.
This caused a few regressions, which I made the judgement call to add
workarounds for. Two steps forward, one step back, is still progress.
The regressions were:
* Two behavior tests having to do with unions. These tests were
intentionally exercising the LLVM constant value lowering, however,
due to the bug with garbage collection that was fixed in this commit,
the LLVM code was not getting exercised, and union types/values were
not implemented correctly, due to me forgetting that LLVM does not
allow bitcasting aggregate values.
- This is worked around by allowing those 2 test cases to regress,
moving them to the "passing for stage1 only" section.
* The test-stage2 test cases (in test/cases/*) for non-LLVM backends
previously did not have any calls to lower struct values, but now
they do. The code that was there was just `@panic("TODO")`. I
replaced that code with a stub that generates the wrong value. This
is an intentional miscompilation that will obviously need to get
fixed before any struct behavior tests pass. None of the current
tests we have exercise loading any values from these global const
structs, so there is not a problem until we try to improve these
backends.
A general-purpose programming language and toolchain for maintaining robust, optimal, and reusable software.
Resources
- Introduction
- Download & Documentation
- Chapter 0 - Getting Started | ZigLearn.org
- Community
- Contributing
- Code of Conduct
- Frequently Asked Questions
- Community Projects
Installation
- download a pre-built binary
- install from a package manager
- build from source
- bootstrap zig for any target
License
The ultimate goal of the Zig project is to serve users. As a first-order effect, this means users of the compiler, helping programmers to write better software. Even more important, however, are the end-users.
Zig is intended to be used to help end-users accomplish their goals. Zig should be used to empower end-users, never to exploit them financially, or to limit their freedom to interact with hardware or software in any way.
However, such problems are best solved with social norms, not with software licenses. Any attempt to complicate the software license of Zig would risk compromising the value Zig provides.
Therefore, Zig is available under the MIT (Expat) License, and comes with a humble request: use it to make software better serve the needs of end-users.
This project redistributes code from other projects, some of which have other licenses besides MIT. Such licenses are generally similar to the MIT license for practical purposes. See the subdirectories and files inside lib/ for more details.