6917a8c258
Well, this was a journey! The original issue I was trying to fix is covered by the new behavior test in array.zig: in essence, `ty` and `coerced_ty` result locations were not correctly propagated. While fixing this, I noticed a similar bug in struct inits: the type was propagated to *fields* fine, but the actual struct init was unnecessarily anonymous, which could lead to unnecessary copies. Note that the behavior test added in struct.zig was already passing - the bug here didn't change any easy-to-test behavior - but I figured I'd add it anyway. This is a little harder than it seems, because the result type may not itself be an array/struct type: it could be an optional / error union wrapper. A new ZIR instruction is introduced to unwrap these. This is also made a little tricky by the fact that it's possible for result types to be unknown at the time of semantic analysis (due to `anytype` parameters), leading to generic poison. In these cases, we must essentially downgrade to an anonymous initialization. Fixing these issues exposed *another* bug, related to type resolution in Sema. That issue is now tracked by #16603. As a temporary workaround for this bug, a few result locations for builtin function operands have been disabled in AstGen. This is technically a breaking change, but it's very minor: I doubt it'll cause any breakage in the wild.
A general-purpose programming language and toolchain for maintaining robust, optimal, and reusable software.
Documentation
If you are looking at this README file in a source tree, please refer to the Release Notes, Language Reference, or Standard Library Documentation corresponding to the version of Zig that you are using by following the appropriate link on the download page.
Otherwise, you're looking at a release of Zig, and you can find documentation here:
- doc/langref.html
- doc/std/index.html
Installation
A Zig installation is composed of two things:
- The Zig executable
- The lib/ directory
At runtime, the executable searches up the file system for the lib/ directory, relative to itself:
- lib/
- zig/lib/
- ../lib/
- ../zig/lib/
- (and so on)
In other words, you can unpack a release of Zig anywhere, and then begin
using it immediately. There is no need to install it globally, although this
mechanism supports that use case too (i.e. /usr/bin/zig and /usr/lib/zig/).
Building from Source
Ensure you have the required dependencies:
- CMake >= 2.8.12
- System C/C++ Toolchain
- LLVM, Clang, LLD development libraries == 16.x
Then it is the standard CMake build process:
mkdir build
cd build
cmake ..
make install
For more options, tips, and troubleshooting, please see the Building Zig From Source page on the wiki.
Contributing
Zig is Free and Open Source Software. We welcome bug reports and patches from everyone. However, keep in mind that Zig governance is BDFN (Benevolent Dictator For Now) which means that Andrew Kelley has final say on the design and implementation of everything.
One of the best ways you can contribute to Zig is to start using it for an open-source personal project.
This leads to discovering bugs and helps flesh out use cases, which lead to further design iterations of Zig. Importantly, each issue found this way comes with real world motivations, making it straightforward to explain the reasoning behind proposals and feature requests.
You will be taken much more seriously on the issue tracker if you have a personal project that uses Zig.
The issue label Contributor Friendly exists to help you find issues that are limited in scope and/or knowledge of Zig internals.
Please note that issues labeled Proposal but do not also have the Accepted label are still under consideration, and efforts to implement such a proposal have a high risk of being wasted. If you are interested in a proposal which is still under consideration, please express your interest in the issue tracker, providing extra insights and considerations that others have not yet expressed. The most highly regarded argument in such a discussion is a real world use case.
For more tips, please see the Contributing page on the wiki.
Community
The Zig community is decentralized. Anyone is free to start and maintain their own space for Zig users to gather. There is no concept of "official" or "unofficial". Each gathering place has its own moderators and rules. Users are encouraged to be aware of the social structures of the spaces they inhabit, and work purposefully to facilitate spaces that align with their values.
Please see the Community wiki page for a public listing of social spaces.