Comment by flossly
1 day ago
I thought Zig has a C compiler built in? Or is it just the Zig build system that's able to compile C, but uses an external compiler for that?
Still a proper programmer-flex to build another one.
1 day ago
I thought Zig has a C compiler built in? Or is it just the Zig build system that's able to compile C, but uses an external compiler for that?
Still a proper programmer-flex to build another one.
Zig actually bundles LLVM's Clang, which it uses to compile C with the `zig cc` command. But the long term goal seems to not be so tightly coupled to LLVM, so I'm expecting that to move elsewhere. They still do some clever stuff around compiler-rt, allowing it to be better at cross-compilation than raw Clang, but the bulk of it is mostly just Clang.
There is also another C compiler written in Zig, Aro[1], which seems to be much more complete than TFA. Zig started using that as a library for its TranslateC functionality (for translating C headers into Zig, not whole programs) in 0.16.
[1]: https://github.com/Vexu/arocc
They're not planning on dropping Clang.
They kinda are: "This issue is to fully eliminate LLVM, Clang, and LLD libraries from the Zig project." https://github.com/ziglang/zig/issues/16270
9 replies →
I expressly said "not be so tightly coupled to LLVM" because I know they're not planning on dropping it altogether. But it is the plan for LLVM and Clang not to be compiled into the Zig binary anymore, because that has proven to be very burdensome. Instead, the plan seems to be to "side-car" it somehow.