sokol-samples VS mach-examples

Zig currently doesn't allow chained designators and also doesn't allow to partially initialize arrays and fill up the rest of the array with default values.

E.g. the closest Zig equivalent to this C99 code:

https://github.com/floooh/sokol-samples/blob/b3bc55c4411fa03...

...is this:

https://github.com/floooh/sokol-zig/blob/a4b3c287fadd153a504...

...note how part of the initialization had to be moved out into "code".

There's a ticket about this here, but it's currently not high-priority:

https://github.com/ziglang/zig/issues/6068

This is a simple Pong-like I've written in Raylib compiled to WASM - https://wasm-stuff.netlify.app/pong

Source code is here: https://github.com/rrampage/skitter/tree/master/pong-raylib

It is fairly straightforward to get Raylib running in the browser. I used @flohofwoe's HTML shell file ( https://github.com/floooh/sokol-samples/blob/master/webpage/... ).

PS: also if shader functions could be directly defined "inline" in regular CPU code (and behind a special function pointer type), there would be no need for string literal shenanigans like this:

https://github.com/floooh/sokol-samples/blob/3f10c1a0620cec9...

(and shader compilation would happen during the regular build and would also generate regular compiler errors - with current toolchains that's only possible with a lot of build system magic)

I think something along those lines (rarely used...) was also given by the C++ Committee as justification why so much of the C99 designated init feature set was left out of C++20. But in reality, all C99 designated-init 'sub-features' complement each other nicely once you start using them. It's a great way for building 'data-driven' APIs.

For instance check out this call to create a 3D-API pipeline-state-object in C99:

https://github.com/floooh/sokol-samples/blob/ad9047e228a8441...

I'm using anonymous nested structs extensively for grouping struct items, but I consider the extra field name a feature, not something that should be hidden:

https://github.com/floooh/sokol-samples/blob/bfb30ea00b5948f...

(also note the 'inplace initialization' which follows the state struct definition using C99's designated initialization)

It's an STB-style single-file library, which means the implementation is in a separate ifdef-block from the interface declarations, this allows to compile the implemenentation in a separate source file (which can be a C file), and be used in different source files (which can be C++ files).

For example (using stb_image.h):

https://github.com/floooh/sokol-samples/blob/master/libs/stb...

C99 has made all that a lot easier, you can setup, initialize a struct and call the function taking a pointer to that struct all in one call:

https://github.com/floooh/sokol-samples/blob/89f5825ab5d3690...

The Win32 window system functions and D3D11 are actually very convenient to work with in C99, better than C++ actually.

Zig fits pretty naturally here too. We've got ~19 WebGPU examples[1] which use Dawn natively (no browser support yet), and we build it using Zig's build system so it 'just works' out of the box with zero fuss as long as you grab a recent Zig version[2]. No messing with cmake/ninja/depot_tools/etc.

WASM support in Zig, Rust, and C++ is also not equal. C++ prefers Emscripten which reimplements parts of popular libraries like SDL, for me personally that feels a bit weird as I don't want my compiler implementing my libraries / changing how they behave. Rust I believe generally avoids emscripten(?), but Zig for sure lets me target WASM natively and compile C/C++ code to it using the LLVM backend and soon the custom Zig compiler backend.

[1] https://github.com/hexops/mach-examples

[2] https://github.com/hexops/mach#supported-zig-version

git clone --recursive https://github.com/hexops/mach-examples cd mach-examples/ zig build run-sprite2d

Mach core (pretty much ready for use today): a modern alternative to e.g. SDL+OpenGL which gives you just a Window+Input+GPU. We have ~16 examples including texturing, PBR, deferred rendering, etc.

links to the github examples are all busted: https://github.com/hexops/mach-examples/tree/main/cubemap