Zig Devlog: Self-Hosted x86 Back End Is Now Default in Debug Mode

This page summarizes the projects mentioned and recommended in the original post on news.ycombinator.com

Stream - Scalable APIs for Chat, Feeds, Moderation, & Video.
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InfluxDB – Built for High-Performance Time Series Workloads
InfluxDB 3 OSS is now GA. Transform, enrich, and act on time series data directly in the database. Automate critical tasks and eliminate the need to move data externally. Download now.
www.influxdata.com
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  1. zig

    General-purpose programming language and toolchain for maintaining robust, optimal, and reusable software.

    As far as I know, Zig has a bunch of things in the works for a better development experience. Almost every day there's something being worked on - like https://github.com/ziglang/zig/pull/24124 just now. I know that Zig had some plans in the past to also work on hot code swapping. At this rate of development, I wouldn't be surprised if hot code swapping was functional within a year on x86_64.

    The biggest pain point I personally have with Zig right now is the speed of `comptime` - The compiler has a lot of work to do here, and running a brainF** DSL at compile-time is pretty slow (speaking from experience). Will we have improvements to this section of the compiler any time soon?

    Overall I'm really hyped for these new backends that Zig is introducing. Can't wait to make my own URCL (https://github.com/ModPunchtree/URCL) backend for Zig. ;)

  2. Stream

    Stream - Scalable APIs for Chat, Feeds, Moderation, & Video. Stream helps developers build engaging apps that scale to millions with performant and flexible Chat, Feeds, Moderation, and Video APIs and SDKs powered by a global edge network and enterprise-grade infrastructure.

    Stream logo
  3. URCL

    URCL Official Documentation

    As far as I know, Zig has a bunch of things in the works for a better development experience. Almost every day there's something being worked on - like https://github.com/ziglang/zig/pull/24124 just now. I know that Zig had some plans in the past to also work on hot code swapping. At this rate of development, I wouldn't be surprised if hot code swapping was functional within a year on x86_64.

    The biggest pain point I personally have with Zig right now is the speed of `comptime` - The compiler has a lot of work to do here, and running a brainF** DSL at compile-time is pretty slow (speaking from experience). Will we have improvements to this section of the compiler any time soon?

    Overall I'm really hyped for these new backends that Zig is introducing. Can't wait to make my own URCL (https://github.com/ModPunchtree/URCL) backend for Zig. ;)

  4. zig-sdl3

    Zig wrapper for SDL3.

    Package management in Zig is more manual than Rust, involving fetching the package URL using the CLI, then importing the module in your build script. This has its upsides - you can depend on arbitrary archives, so lots of Zig packages of C libraries are just a build script with a dependency on a unmodified tarball release. But obviously it's a little trickier for beginners.

    SDL3 has both a native Zig wrapper: https://github.com/Gota7/zig-sdl3

    And a more basic repackaging on the C library/API: https://github.com/castholm/SDL

    For QuickJS, the only option is the C API: https://github.com/allyourcodebase/quickjs-ng

    Zig makes it really easy to use C packages directly like this, though Zig's types are much more strict so you'll inevitably be doing a lot of casting when interacting with the API

  5. SDL

    SDL ported to the Zig build system (by castholm)

    Package management in Zig is more manual than Rust, involving fetching the package URL using the CLI, then importing the module in your build script. This has its upsides - you can depend on arbitrary archives, so lots of Zig packages of C libraries are just a build script with a dependency on a unmodified tarball release. But obviously it's a little trickier for beginners.

    SDL3 has both a native Zig wrapper: https://github.com/Gota7/zig-sdl3

    And a more basic repackaging on the C library/API: https://github.com/castholm/SDL

    For QuickJS, the only option is the C API: https://github.com/allyourcodebase/quickjs-ng

    Zig makes it really easy to use C packages directly like this, though Zig's types are much more strict so you'll inevitably be doing a lot of casting when interacting with the API

  6. quickjs-ng

    Package management in Zig is more manual than Rust, involving fetching the package URL using the CLI, then importing the module in your build script. This has its upsides - you can depend on arbitrary archives, so lots of Zig packages of C libraries are just a build script with a dependency on a unmodified tarball release. But obviously it's a little trickier for beginners.

    SDL3 has both a native Zig wrapper: https://github.com/Gota7/zig-sdl3

    And a more basic repackaging on the C library/API: https://github.com/castholm/SDL

    For QuickJS, the only option is the C API: https://github.com/allyourcodebase/quickjs-ng

    Zig makes it really easy to use C packages directly like this, though Zig's types are much more strict so you'll inevitably be doing a lot of casting when interacting with the API

  7. clr

    Checker for Lifetimes and other Refinement types (by ityonemo)

    Im pretty sure valgrind and friends can be used in zig.

    Zig is still not 1.0, theres not much stability guarantees, making something like Frama-C, even tho it is possible is simply going to be soo much pain due to constant breakages as compared to something like C.

    But it is not impossible and there have been demos of refinement type checkers https://github.com/ityonemo/clr

    Beyond that, tools like antithesis https://antithesis.com/ exist that can be used for checking bugs. [ I dont have any experience with it. ]

  8. madness

    Madness enables you to easily run the same binary on NixOS and non-NixOS systems (by antithesishq)

    Im pretty sure valgrind and friends can be used in zig.

    Zig is still not 1.0, theres not much stability guarantees, making something like Frama-C, even tho it is possible is simply going to be soo much pain due to constant breakages as compared to something like C.

    But it is not impossible and there have been demos of refinement type checkers https://github.com/ityonemo/clr

    Beyond that, tools like antithesis https://antithesis.com/ exist that can be used for checking bugs. [ I dont have any experience with it. ]

  9. InfluxDB

    InfluxDB – Built for High-Performance Time Series Workloads. InfluxDB 3 OSS is now GA. Transform, enrich, and act on time series data directly in the database. Automate critical tasks and eliminate the need to move data externally. Download now.

    InfluxDB logo
  10. poop

    Performance Optimizer Observation Platform

    This is awesome for Zig, I think this direction is gonna be a primary differentiator when comparing to Rust.

    And hey, I wrote a lot of the rendering code for that perf analyzer. Always fun to see your work show up on the internet.

    https://github.com/andrewrk/poop

  11. zquickjs

    High level quickjs bindings for zig

    It is pretty easy to interface stuff like QuickJS C API. I had a POC here from last year: https://github.com/eknkc/zquickjs

    Even this is pretty usable, handling value conversions and such thanks to comptime.

NOTE: The number of mentions on this list indicates mentions on common posts plus user suggested alternatives. Hence, a higher number means a more popular project.

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