zig-update

A convenient tool to quickly download the latest zig compiler. Currently written in python3. Run ./zig-update on linux and python3 zig-update on windows. Use the --clean option to cleanup older compilers (note: --clean will only clean older compilers if it successfully installed the latest one).

zig-update details

zig-update installs zig into a versioned sub-directory in your PATH and adds a script/symlink file directly in the PATH directory so that zig can be executed from anywhere. The zig-update script will find this directory from previous installations or will prompt to select one if not found. On linux, installing zig to ~/bin would result in these files:

Linux:

# the extracted zig tarball
~/bin/zig-linux-x86_64-0.4.0+9daf0140/

# a symlink to be able to invoke zig from anywhere
~/bin/zig -> zig-linux-x86_64-0.4.0+9daf0140/zig

And on windows if installed to C:\, then it would install these files:

Windows:

# the extracted zig zip archive
C:\zig-windows-x86_64-0.4.0+9daf0140

# a batch file that forwards calls to zig-windows-x86_64-0.4.0+9daf0140 to be able to invoke zig from anywhere
C:\zig.bat

The script downloads a json file from https://ziglang.org/download/index.json to find the latest version. The script will perform this fetch every time it is executed, but will only download/extract the latest version if it has not already done so.

Windows

Prepare a new build

cd <zig_repo>
mkdir <build_dir>

Generate a build

cd <build_dir>
<this_repo>\cmake <llvm-dir>

Run the build

msbuild -p:Configuration=Release -m:<cpu_count> INSTALL.vcxproj

Run the tests

bin\zig build --build-file ..\build.zig test

Building LLVM/Clang/LLD with Nix

• Start a pure nix-shell

nix-shell --pure -p cmake python perl zlib

Using Nix

• Zig stays pretty up-to-date with llvm, so you may need to add the nix unstable channel

NixOS:

# check if nixos-unstable is added:
sudo nix-channel --list

# if not added run
sudo nix-channel --add https://nixos.org/channels/nixos-unstable nixos-unstable
sudo nix-channel --update

# NixOS
nix-shell --pure --argstr channel nixos-unstable

NixPkgs (using nix as package manager only):

# check if nixpkgs-unstable is added:
nix-channel --list

# if not added run
nix-channel --add https://nixos.org/channels/nixpkgs-unstable nixpkgs-unstable
nix-channel --update

• Install llvm_8 and clang_8

# NixOS
sudo nix-env -iA nixos-unstable.llvm_8 nixos-unstable.clang_8

# NixPkgs
nix-env -iA nixpkgs-unstable.llvm_8 nixpkgs-unstable.clang_8

• Now build

cd <zig_repo>
mkdir <build_dir>
cd <build_dir>
cmake ..