I just want to develop something different. But what? Game, graphics, sound processing?
Surely you’ll say Rust! Yep done a lot of things in Rust. But maybe C?
Ohhh… Noooo…
Remember Segmentation Fault?
How are you going to manage depenencies?
OK, So try to use some C library in ZIG! How hard it will be? Let’s see.
Try to write somple app using raylib.
$ cd ray_test_zig
$ zig init-exe
Got a project. Try to run?
Yep it’s working.
We need to fetch and include raylib somehow.
Zig uses zon to fetch dependencies. Does it work with C libraries? Find out!
We need to provide where the lib is! Here it is:
Create build.zig.zon file.
.name = “ray_test_zig”,
.version = “0.0.1”,
.dependencies = .{
.raylib = .{
.url = “https://github.com/raysan5/raylib/archive/refs/tags/5.0.tar.gz”,
},
},
}
Try to build project?
What it is?
.url = “https://github.com/raysan5/raylib/archive/refs/tags/5.0.tar.gz”,
^~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
note: expected .hash = “1220c28847ca8e8756734ae84355802b764c9d9cf4de057dbc6fc2b15c56e726f27b”,
Ok, zon expects a hash, just in case someone will try to hack out computer. Once again:
.name = “ray_test_zig”,
.version = “0.0.1”,
.dependencies = .{
.raylib = .{
.url = “https://github.com/raysan5/raylib/archive/refs/tags/5.0.tar.gz”,
.hash = “1220c28847ca8e8756734ae84355802b764c9d9cf4de057dbc6fc2b15c56e726f27b”,
},
},
}
Try once again:
It works! Woooow! That’s it?
No! We need to tell zig to include raylib during build!
Now we will edit build.zig. Just above line ~30 we have b.installArtifact(exe);
Before that line we need to add:
.target = target,
.optimize = optimize,
});
exe.installLibraryHeaders(raylib.artifact(“raylib”));
exe.linkLibrary(raylib.artifact(“raylib”));
We’re teling zig where header files are and to link out executable with raylib.
Does it works? Let’s check!
OMG! Looks like somethings with raylib was happened. It’s compiled?
Let’s port an simple example from raylib to zig.
In the src/main.zig:
const ray = @cImport({
@cInclude(“raylib.h”);
});
pub fn main() !void {
ray.InitWindow(800, 450, “Hey ZIG”);
defer ray.CloseWindow();
while (!ray.WindowShouldClose()) {
ray.BeginDrawing();
ray.ClearBackground(ray.RAYWHITE);
ray.DrawText(“Congrats! You created your first window!”, 190, 200, 20, ray.LIGHTGRAY);
ray.EndDrawing();
}
}
No errors? Great!
We got the raylib window!
As you can see! Just one line of code and raylib working like native lib!
So yep! Zig can C!