6 ms·

Zig 0.7.0 tagged

90 points by jedisct1 6y ago

haolez 6y ago
"Zig 0.5.0 introduced async functions. This feature has no dependency on a host operating system or even heap-allocated memory. That means async functions are available for the freestanding target. Zig infers whether a function is async, and allows async/await on non-async functions, which means that Zig libraries are agnostic of blocking vs async I/O. Zig avoids function colors." Nice! I had the impression that Zig wasn't so simple as I've imagined it due to features like this, but this actually sounds like a lot of thought was put into this to adhere to Zig's principles. Looks cool!
- jedisct1 6y ago
  See https://kristoff.it/blog/zig-colorblind-async-await/ https://kristoff.it/blog/zig-colorblind-async-await/ for more information about Zig's “Colorblind” Async/Await.
  - j1elo 6y ago
    Thanks, I got from this a nice reading, a new video for my watch list, and a new Twitch channel to follow... not bad!
- agumonkey 6y ago
  Finally
anonymousDan 6y ago
Can anyone with more experience elaborate on the pros and cons of Zig Vs Rust for systems programming? For example are there any efforts to write an OS in Zig?
- jamii 6y ago
  https://scattered-thoughts.net/writing/assorted-thoughts-on-zig-and-rust/ https://scattered-thoughts.net/writing/assorted-thoughts-on-...
  - hitekker 6y ago
    I like the way you structured your blog post. Quite minimal and easy to skim. My only suggestion might be to give each section a small title.
- gameswithgo 6y ago
  Zig doesn't prevent memory errors, or data races at compile time, but Zig does handle undefined behavior better than C/C++, and has options instead of nulls. So you get some sized step in the right direction on correctness, without adding the complexity of a borrow checker. Zig compiles faster, Rust is more mature of an ecosystem. Zig is a simpler language, Rust is featureful/more complex.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
- simias 6y ago
  To me Zig seems to be an in-between between C and Rust. It feels a lot more modern and pleasant to use than C without the rather large complexity of Rust. Of course, nothing comes free, so it's also less safe than Rust. I personally really enjoy Rust's commitment to safety and I do find that the difficulty of writing Rust code that will pass the borrow checker and its stricter type system is well worth it but I know that some people find it frustrating and not very pragmatic. If you fall in this camp then Zig might well be worth a try. Basically coming from C if you think that Rust goes too far, try Zig. If you think that Zig doesn't go far enough, try Rust.
- defen 6y ago
  Zig's C integration story is pretty compelling - https://ziglang.org/#Integration-with-C-libraries-without-FFIbindings https://ziglang.org/#Integration-with-C-libraries-without-FF... You can call C code from Rust as well but it's not as tightly integrated into the language (and probably can't be, since C code is inherently unsafe).
AndyKelley 6y ago
I don't have the release notes done yet but we're doing a live release party on twitch right now: https://www.twitch.tv/kristoff_it https://www.twitch.tv/kristoff_it Edit: it's over now. I'm still working on the tarballs and release notes.
- chronogram 6y ago
  Oh, uBO doesn’t block the ads there.
  - pityJuke 6y ago
    Yeah, over the past month a war of sorts has been breaking out amongst ad blocker users and Twitch. So far, Twitch has been winning.
    - bepvte 6y ago
      This user script works for me: https://gist.github.com/pixeltris/77c676ef65b0b76e7aa56d8a0e0b3897 https://gist.github.com/pixeltris/77c676ef65b0b76e7aa56d8a0e...
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
secondcoming 6y ago
"Carefully chosen undefined behavior. For example, in Zig both signed and unsigned integers have undefined behavior on overflow, contrasted to only signed integers in C. This facilitates optimizations that are not available in C. " Whoa, whoa, whoa. UB on unsigned!? Best of luck.
- xandroo 6y ago
  It’s checked in debug modes (overflow is a runtime error). You can explicitly use the overflow operator (+%) if you know that’s the behavior you want.
  - jedisct1 6y ago
    In ReleaseSafe mode, too.
  - secondcoming 6y ago
    Fine, but the bugs this will cause when people port code across from C or C++... probably painful. So, to be safe people should build both Debug and Release?
    - jedisct1 6y ago
      Develop in debug mode, deploy in safe release mode, and when you're absolutely sure that everything is safe, you can switch to the fast release mode. It is also possible to selectively disable/enable safety for individual code blocks.
    - dnautics 6y ago
      It's going to be a real strategy to write your code in releasesafe, identify hot code, and mark it off as releasefast on a function by function basis
    - xandroo 6y ago
      Alternatively, there may be unfound overflow bugs in that C/C++ code. Worth noting that UB is also checked in ReleaseSafe mode. Related issue: https://github.com/ziglang/zig/issues/2301 https://github.com/ziglang/zig/issues/2301
neolog 6y ago
I would like to read about Zig vs Nim.
- k__ 6y ago
  Yes, the comptime stuff I read about Zug sounded like Nim to me.
- kettro 6y ago
  Nim is garbage collected, Zig is manual
  - k__ 6y ago
    As far as I know Nim is both.
- ojnabieoot 6y ago
  Generally Zig is a bit lower-level and simpler. One big difference is that Nim compiles to C whereas Zig compiles to LLVM IR. Zig is also heavily imperative / procedural, whereas Nim supports more object-programming paradigms, algebraic data types, more sophisticated exception handling, and so on. They are both low-level compared to Python but fill different niches.
  - vanderZwan 6y ago
    If anyone ever considers writing a Nim variant that compiles to Zig, I suggest that it be called "Zinnig". Aside from being punny it means sensible/rational in Dutch, which seems appropriate ;) [0] https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/zinnig https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/zinnig
  - nimmer 6y ago
    > low-level compared to Python In what way? Nim gives full access to hardware, memory management & co, but the expressiveness is very similar to Python.
sobeston 6y ago
https://ziglearn.org/ https://ziglearn.org/ should be up to date for 0.7.0 already. Do have a peak if you haven't yet learned how to use Zig; the first chapter (most of the language) should be readable in under an hour.
- vanderZwan 6y ago
  So is the following paragraph (that shows up after the first couple of paragraphs) there for future-proofing the guide, or a sign that updated guide hasn't actually been released yet? Because both interpretations sound reasonable to me > This guide assumes you’re using a master build of Zig as opposed to the latest major release, which means downloading a binary from the site or compiling from source; the version of Zig in your package manager is likely outdated. This guide does not support the 0.7 build of Zig.
  - sobeston 6y ago
    For future proofing, I just don't want to exactly support tagged releases as of now. Zig could release breaking changes next week and I would update the guide to fit that; master is followed.
generichuman 6y ago
I was actually going to submit the Zig Newsletter link [1], but I gotta say, randomly talking about another language that is not even released is baffling. [1] https://buttondown.email/ZigSHOWTIME/archive/e83ee9c5-53e0-4c9f-855f-0dfe15991cb8 https://buttondown.email/ZigSHOWTIME/archive/e83ee9c5-53e0-4...
- kristoff_it 6y ago
  Hi that's the newsletter I write and it's not an official thing. That passage is based on my personal experience of watching other projects that I deem reputable (i.e. Jai, Handmade Hero) and doing the very basic thing of looking at how they are doing compared to us. Jonathan Blow is a very smart individual, in a sense that goes way past his programming ability (as exemplified by the fact that 2 out of the 3 talks of his that I link to in the newsletter are not about programming), that said he has approached the development of Jai in a diametrically opposite way compared to what Zig is doing. We have a full-fledged OSS project with contributors, PRs, etc; while JB, while IIRC he plans to open-source the code eventually, does development in private and even got to the point of refusing to showcase new features he's adding because he doesn't want other projects to copy him. Clearly there is a philosophical disagreement there between Zig and Jai, but, as I said earlier, I really think Jai is a valid project and as such I'm not dismissive of those disagreements. On our side of the argument we have a constantly increasing number of contributors, so the point I was making in the newsletter is that it really means something, because, at least according to my perception from watching JB's streams, we're moving at a faster speed. I've personally learned a lot watching Casey and John stream themselves coding (Casey also started a youtube channel on legal cases, which is another very interesting watch), but they're not perfect and in the specific case of developing in the open vs developing in a cave, I think I have a priviledged PoV where I can raise valid criticism. Does everything we write on the internet have to be investor-friendly? Fuck I hope not.
  - bpeebles 6y ago
    I don't really understand why it makes sense to spend most of a newsletter about zig 0.7 complaining about another language, instead of the cool stuff about ziglang. They're similar in that they're both "better Cs" but their targets seem pretty different. > Does everything we write on the internet have to be investor-friendly? Fuck I hope not. I don't see it at all reflective about "investor-friendly" but more the existing community around the language. It's great that zig's is active, but if some of the major community members spend seemingly equal/the majorityu of something like a newsletter about a fairly big development release being incredibly negative toward another project while pretending to be respectful, eh. I'm not saying you have to cater to me, since I'm a nobody, but this and a few other things about the zig community have made me less interested in spending my limited free time playing with it.

90 points by jedisct1 6y ago

"Zig 0.5.0 introduced async functions. This feature has no dependency on a host operating system or even heap-allocated memory. That means async functions are available for the freestanding target. Zig infers whether a function is async, and allows async/await on non-async functions, which means that Zig libraries are agnostic of blocking vs async I/O. Zig avoids function colors." Nice! I had the impression that Zig wasn't so simple as I've imagined it due to features like this, but this actually sounds like a lot of thought was put into this to adhere to Zig's principles. Looks cool!

jedisct1 6y ago
See https://kristoff.it/blog/zig-colorblind-async-await/ https://kristoff.it/blog/zig-colorblind-async-await/ for more information about Zig's “Colorblind” Async/Await.
- j1elo 6y ago
  Thanks, I got from this a nice reading, a new video for my watch list, and a new Twitch channel to follow... not bad!
agumonkey 6y ago
Finally

anonymousDan 6y ago

Can anyone with more experience elaborate on the pros and cons of Zig Vs Rust for systems programming? For example are there any efforts to write an OS in Zig?

jamii 6y ago
https://scattered-thoughts.net/writing/assorted-thoughts-on-zig-and-rust/ https://scattered-thoughts.net/writing/assorted-thoughts-on-...
- hitekker 6y ago
  I like the way you structured your blog post. Quite minimal and easy to skim. My only suggestion might be to give each section a small title.
gameswithgo 6y ago
Zig doesn't prevent memory errors, or data races at compile time, but Zig does handle undefined behavior better than C/C++, and has options instead of nulls. So you get some sized step in the right direction on correctness, without adding the complexity of a borrow checker. Zig compiles faster, Rust is more mature of an ecosystem. Zig is a simpler language, Rust is featureful/more complex.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
simias 6y ago
To me Zig seems to be an in-between between C and Rust. It feels a lot more modern and pleasant to use than C without the rather large complexity of Rust. Of course, nothing comes free, so it's also less safe than Rust. I personally really enjoy Rust's commitment to safety and I do find that the difficulty of writing Rust code that will pass the borrow checker and its stricter type system is well worth it but I know that some people find it frustrating and not very pragmatic. If you fall in this camp then Zig might well be worth a try. Basically coming from C if you think that Rust goes too far, try Zig. If you think that Zig doesn't go far enough, try Rust.
defen 6y ago
Zig's C integration story is pretty compelling - https://ziglang.org/#Integration-with-C-libraries-without-FFIbindings https://ziglang.org/#Integration-with-C-libraries-without-FF... You can call C code from Rust as well but it's not as tightly integrated into the language (and probably can't be, since C code is inherently unsafe).

AndyKelley 6y ago

I don't have the release notes done yet but we're doing a live release party on twitch right now: https://www.twitch.tv/kristoff_it https://www.twitch.tv/kristoff_it Edit: it's over now. I'm still working on the tarballs and release notes.

chronogram 6y ago
Oh, uBO doesn’t block the ads there.
- pityJuke 6y ago
  Yeah, over the past month a war of sorts has been breaking out amongst ad blocker users and Twitch. So far, Twitch has been winning.
  - bepvte 6y ago
    This user script works for me: https://gist.github.com/pixeltris/77c676ef65b0b76e7aa56d8a0e0b3897 https://gist.github.com/pixeltris/77c676ef65b0b76e7aa56d8a0e...

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

secondcoming 6y ago

"Carefully chosen undefined behavior. For example, in Zig both signed and unsigned integers have undefined behavior on overflow, contrasted to only signed integers in C. This facilitates optimizations that are not available in C. " Whoa, whoa, whoa. UB on unsigned!? Best of luck.

xandroo 6y ago
It’s checked in debug modes (overflow is a runtime error). You can explicitly use the overflow operator (+%) if you know that’s the behavior you want.
- jedisct1 6y ago
  In ReleaseSafe mode, too.
- secondcoming 6y ago
  Fine, but the bugs this will cause when people port code across from C or C++... probably painful. So, to be safe people should build both Debug and Release?
  - jedisct1 6y ago
    Develop in debug mode, deploy in safe release mode, and when you're absolutely sure that everything is safe, you can switch to the fast release mode. It is also possible to selectively disable/enable safety for individual code blocks.
  - dnautics 6y ago
    It's going to be a real strategy to write your code in releasesafe, identify hot code, and mark it off as releasefast on a function by function basis
  - xandroo 6y ago
    Alternatively, there may be unfound overflow bugs in that C/C++ code. Worth noting that UB is also checked in ReleaseSafe mode. Related issue: https://github.com/ziglang/zig/issues/2301 https://github.com/ziglang/zig/issues/2301

neolog 6y ago

I would like to read about Zig vs Nim.

k__ 6y ago
Yes, the comptime stuff I read about Zug sounded like Nim to me.
kettro 6y ago
Nim is garbage collected, Zig is manual
- k__ 6y ago
  As far as I know Nim is both.
ojnabieoot 6y ago
Generally Zig is a bit lower-level and simpler. One big difference is that Nim compiles to C whereas Zig compiles to LLVM IR. Zig is also heavily imperative / procedural, whereas Nim supports more object-programming paradigms, algebraic data types, more sophisticated exception handling, and so on. They are both low-level compared to Python but fill different niches.
- vanderZwan 6y ago
  If anyone ever considers writing a Nim variant that compiles to Zig, I suggest that it be called "Zinnig". Aside from being punny it means sensible/rational in Dutch, which seems appropriate ;) [0] https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/zinnig https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/zinnig
- nimmer 6y ago
  > low-level compared to Python In what way? Nim gives full access to hardware, memory management & co, but the expressiveness is very similar to Python.

sobeston 6y ago

https://ziglearn.org/ https://ziglearn.org/ should be up to date for 0.7.0 already. Do have a peak if you haven't yet learned how to use Zig; the first chapter (most of the language) should be readable in under an hour.

vanderZwan 6y ago
So is the following paragraph (that shows up after the first couple of paragraphs) there for future-proofing the guide, or a sign that updated guide hasn't actually been released yet? Because both interpretations sound reasonable to me > This guide assumes you’re using a master build of Zig as opposed to the latest major release, which means downloading a binary from the site or compiling from source; the version of Zig in your package manager is likely outdated. This guide does not support the 0.7 build of Zig.
- sobeston 6y ago
  For future proofing, I just don't want to exactly support tagged releases as of now. Zig could release breaking changes next week and I would update the guide to fit that; master is followed.

generichuman 6y ago

I was actually going to submit the Zig Newsletter link [1], but I gotta say, randomly talking about another language that is not even released is baffling. [1] https://buttondown.email/ZigSHOWTIME/archive/e83ee9c5-53e0-4c9f-855f-0dfe15991cb8 https://buttondown.email/ZigSHOWTIME/archive/e83ee9c5-53e0-4...

kristoff_it 6y ago
Hi that's the newsletter I write and it's not an official thing. That passage is based on my personal experience of watching other projects that I deem reputable (i.e. Jai, Handmade Hero) and doing the very basic thing of looking at how they are doing compared to us. Jonathan Blow is a very smart individual, in a sense that goes way past his programming ability (as exemplified by the fact that 2 out of the 3 talks of his that I link to in the newsletter are not about programming), that said he has approached the development of Jai in a diametrically opposite way compared to what Zig is doing. We have a full-fledged OSS project with contributors, PRs, etc; while JB, while IIRC he plans to open-source the code eventually, does development in private and even got to the point of refusing to showcase new features he's adding because he doesn't want other projects to copy him. Clearly there is a philosophical disagreement there between Zig and Jai, but, as I said earlier, I really think Jai is a valid project and as such I'm not dismissive of those disagreements. On our side of the argument we have a constantly increasing number of contributors, so the point I was making in the newsletter is that it really means something, because, at least according to my perception from watching JB's streams, we're moving at a faster speed. I've personally learned a lot watching Casey and John stream themselves coding (Casey also started a youtube channel on legal cases, which is another very interesting watch), but they're not perfect and in the specific case of developing in the open vs developing in a cave, I think I have a priviledged PoV where I can raise valid criticism. Does everything we write on the internet have to be investor-friendly? Fuck I hope not.
- bpeebles 6y ago
  I don't really understand why it makes sense to spend most of a newsletter about zig 0.7 complaining about another language, instead of the cool stuff about ziglang. They're similar in that they're both "better Cs" but their targets seem pretty different. > Does everything we write on the internet have to be investor-friendly? Fuck I hope not. I don't see it at all reflective about "investor-friendly" but more the existing community around the language. It's great that zig's is active, but if some of the major community members spend seemingly equal/the majorityu of something like a newsletter about a fairly big development release being incredibly negative toward another project while pretending to be respectful, eh. I'm not saying you have to cater to me, since I'm a nobody, but this and a few other things about the zig community have made me less interested in spending my limited free time playing with it.