sokol-samples VS sokol-zig

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 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

I maintain auto-generated bindings for my C libraries for Zig and Nim (and Odin and Rust - although the Rust bindings definitely need some love to make them a lot more idiomatic).

I think looking at the examples (which is essentially the same code in different languages) gives you a high level idea, but they only scratch the surface when it comes to language features (things like the Zig code not using comptime features):

Zig: https://github.com/floooh/sokol-zig/tree/master/src/examples

Nim: https://github.com/floooh/sokol-nim/tree/master/examples

Odin: https://github.com/floooh/sokol-odin/tree/main/examples

Rust: https://github.com/floooh/sokol-rust/tree/main/examples

IMHO you really need a programming language to describe a build, even when the result looks very declarative.

E.g. not sure how Meson handles this, but when I have a project with dozens of similar build targets and platform specific compile options, I really want to do the build description in a loop instead of a data tree.

(for example: https://github.com/floooh/sokol-zig/blob/3f978e58712f9eb029b...)

Is this project comparable to the zig sokol project?https://github.com/floooh/sokol-zig

I was rather amazed that I could cross-compile the zig-sokol examples https://github.com/floooh/sokol-zig for a Windows target on a Linux host (WSL Ubuntu). I simply set -target x86_64-windows and copied the executable into Windows and got a nice spinning cube displayed.

(disclaimer: shameless plug) Here's another cross-platform alternative, auto-generated Zig bindings to the Sokol headers:

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

This is quite a bit slimmer than using one of the WebGPU libraries like wgpu-rs or Dawn, because sokol-gfx doesn't need an integrated shader cross-compiler (instead translation from a common shader source to the backend-specific shader formats happens offline).

Eventually I'd also like to support the Android, iOS and WASM backends from Zig (currently this only works from C/C++, for instance here are the WASM demos: https://floooh.github.io/sokol-html5/)

I'm tackling this issue from two sides:

(1) Change the C-API to make it more "binding-generator-friendly", for instance by adding a range/slice-struct to th C-API which bundles a pointer and associated size, or specially named typedefs that only exist to give the binding generator hints for special case handling.

(2) Make the bindings-generator configurable on a per-language and per-API basis, this can be as simple as a map which overrides type- and function-names, or injects manually written code into the generated bindings.

The goal is to make the generated bindings more idiomatic to the target language.

This mostly works if you have control over the underlying C-API of course, e.g. the language bindings are created by the original C-library project, not as an external project to convert a fixed C-API.

I wrote a blog post about this whole topic:

https://floooh.github.io/2020/08/23/sokol-bindgen.html

...and here's an example of one such semi-auto-generated Zig bindings, note the two "injected" helper functions at the top:

https://github.com/floooh/sokol-zig/tree/master/src/sokol

...for instance note the "injected" helper functions here:

https://github.com/floooh/sokol-zig/blob/1c93f60ad178869b84d...

As you can see from the comments there are lots of options. Sokol is another one https://github.com/floooh/sokol-zig