jimkring / nuitka-zig-cc

nuitka-zig-cc

Status Update: It appears to be working OK in the latest nightly build of zig!

This is a small test project to see how to use zig as a backend C compiler with Nuitka.

There is an official Nuitka issue for tracking this (Nuitka/Nuitka#2741) which also references some Zig issues impacting Nuitka's use of zig as a backend C compiler.

How it works

The current approach that this test project takes is:

• Use a shell script named zig-clang-cc.sh that calls zig cc and passes it all command line arguments. The script is simple and badically just does this -> zig cc "$@". This "fools" Nuitka into thinking that zig cc is clang.
• Also, be sure to pass the --clang option to the zig command.
• You can use Nuitka's --standalone option

What's not working

• the --onefile option (for single-file executables) is not yet working with zig (but it's probably something Nuitka team can fix soon)
• cross-compiling with zig doesn't work. The zig-clang-cc.sh script does look for a TARGET environt variable and will pass this to zig cc as -target $TARGET but it won't really work because the Python libraries are already built and cannot be cross-compiled by zig, nor can zig link nuikta's output to those libraries.

Trying it yourself

To give it a try, get the latest nightly build of zig (version 0.12.0-dev.3161+377ecc6af or newer).

Download the zig-clang-cc.sh file and then configure the CC environment variable to be the absolute path to that script. Then you can call nuitka (and be sure to pass the --clang option) as shown below:

# make the script executable
chmod ugo+x ./zig-clang-cc.sh

# set the CC environment variable to the absolute path of the script
export CC="$(pwd)/zig-clang-cc.sh"

# call nuikta and be sure to pass the `--clang` option
python -m nuitka --clang --standalone hello.py