cargo-zigbuild VS dmd

https://github.com/rust-cross/cargo-zigbuild

I’m curious what the blockers are for rustc to cross-compile like zig does natively.

Perhaps you can try cargo-zigbuild, it uses zig-cc for cross-compilation instead of creating a container, so it should be much more lightweight on MacOS, without all the cost of virtualization and file sharing.

I have tried, however I haven't been able to get it to work reliably (e.g. building on windows + linux on WSL works, Mac is a lot more involved; tried building for windows + linux on Mac and I couldn't get it to work at all); I've had some luck using zigbuild but that too doesn't seem to work for Mac.

Zig also takes this approach, and even exposes its C compiler (which if I recall correctly is basically Clang plus diverse sysroots and other customisation out of the box) as a separate `zig cc`.

I do a lot of work in Rust, and cross-compilation can be a pain when you have a lot of C dependencies. Fortunately https://github.com/messense/cargo-zigbuild exists. It sounds crazy, but using Zig's inbuilt C compiler to help build my Rust projects has been the smoothest option I've found.

I can't help but wonder if it would be worth it for Rust to follow D and Zig by shipping its own inbuilt C compiler, even if they still want to also support external C toolchains. It should be roughly the same effort as it was for Zig, given that they both use LLVM.

Wait until you start using cargo zig-build. Suddenly it becomes way better than Go's cross compiler because you can seamlessly cross-compile rust AND C (thanks to Zig compiler of course). https://github.com/messense/cargo-zigbuild

Here's the pipeline spitting out the same error as on my macbook did.

https://github.com/dlang/dmd/actions/runs/8023469412/job/219...

Not completely on topic (if you read TFA) but my favorite Git commit is by compiler badass and HN frequenter, where he checks in an entire C compiler to the D language repo:

https://github.com/dlang/dmd/pull/12507

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27102584

A new generated code alone is 4000 lines long [1]. The actual code added is just 2000 lines, and some are used to pay debts, I mean, to make a proper code generator (which can be alternatively written in a simpler scripting langauge). In any case it is never comparable to the entier C parser proper.

[1] https://github.com/dlang/dmd/pull/15307/files#diff-3677bcc89...

D is completely opensource already (https://github.com/dlang/dmd). The "open" of OpenD is just ADR saying that OpenD will be more open to new language features than D has historically been.

The reference compiler, DMD, is open source: https://github.com/dlang/dmd

But they don't accept just any Pull Request or features the community submits, understandably. There's a process called DIP for language improvements: https://github.com/dlang/DIPs/blob/master/DIPs/README.md

However, by some accounts, it's really hard to get anything through.

Given D already has so many feature, I find that to be a good thing , to be honest, by not everyone agrees, of course.