Puddle Of Code - Zig! Can you C?

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!

Michał Kalbarczyk

Zig! Can you C?