notes.billmill.org / programming / zig /

All Your Codebase

last updated: Sep 16, 2024

A project to replace make/config/cmake etc scripts for some foundational unix libraries with a zig build.zig file instead.

We package C/C++ projects for the Zig build system so that you can reliably compile (and cross-compile!) them with ease.

This both provides convenience for users of the Zig compiler toolchain and also showcases to C/C++ project maintainers what a build.zig file for their project looks like.

Zig can build some libraries unpatched, just by importing them as a dependency and writing a build.zig file.

for example, here is harfbuzz's build.zig file

Others, they have to fork and patch

for example, here is cpython and here is its build.zig

It's notable that the build.zig files are extremely flat and almost entirely devoid of any logic. Mostly, they contain a list of the files to be built and a list of the feature flags available.

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