Zig! Can you C?

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.

$ mkdir ray_test_zig
$ cd ray_test_zig
$ zig init-exe

Got a project. Try to run?

$ zig build 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?

$ zig build

What it is?

Fetch Packages... raylib... ./ray_test_zig/build.zig.zon:7:20: error: url field is missing corresponding hash field
.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:

$ zig build

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:

const raylib = b.dependency("raylib", .{
    .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!

$ zig build

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 std = @import("std");

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();
    }
}

$ zig build

No errors? Great!

$ zig build run

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!

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