[Feature Request] Add support for zig

[cathaysia]

zig supports an easy-to-use cross-compilation experience, and also supports c and cpp. However, cc-rs' support for zig needs to be improved (mainly to perform some special processing when zig is recognized).

If cc-rs can accept these changes, I can make these work.

Tasks

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1. support cc.compiler("zig cc")
2. disable sccache when using zig cc

[NobodyXu]

disable sccache when using zig cc

Does zig-cc not work with sccache?
Is this something that can be fixed in zig itself?

[cathaysia]

the problem is sccache does not support zig, zig has it's own cache system.

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________________________________ From: Jiahao XU ***@***.***> Sent: Friday, November 10, 2023 6:50:23 PM To: rust-lang/cc-rs ***@***.***> Cc: DragonBillow ***@***.***>; Author ***@***.***> Subject: Re: [rust-lang/cc-rs] [Feature Request] Add support for zig (Issue #897) disable sccache when using zig cc Does zig-cc not work with sccache? Is this something that can be fixed in zig itself? ― Reply to this email directly, view it on GitHub<#897 (comment)>, or unsubscribe<https://github.com/notifications/unsubscribe-auth/AKBJ6APIUGD33OR2OAMOZJLYDYBG7AVCNFSM6AAAAAA7FQWZECVHI2DSMVQWIX3LMV43OSLTON2WKQ3PNVWWK3TUHMYTQMBVGQ4TQNZQGA>. You are receiving this because you authored the thread.Message ID: ***@***.***>

[NobodyXu]

the problem is sccache does not support zig,

That's unfortunate...

I think we need to doc this behavior when implementing support for zig cc.

zig has it's own cache system.

Can you provide me a link to the doc please?

I've been using cargo-zigbuild for a while but I never look deep into it, didn't know it has a caching system.

[cathaysia]

maybe this?

https://ziglang.org/documentation/master/#C-Translation-Caching

and here are some links:

• https://gist.github.com/matu3ba/92e5df1166c51b3725dbd04f7ff1cb4e
• system wide zig-cache ziglang/zig#2599

[NobodyXu]

Thanks, but https://gist.github.com/matu3ba/92e5df1166c51b3725dbd04f7ff1cb4e is outdated (its content says it's outdated).

For https://ziglang.org/documentation/master/#C-Translation-Caching , it just says it uses zig caching system but there's no doc for the zig caching system.

[cathaysia]

Yeah, but I guess we don't need to look into zig's caching system? We just need to know that it does.

[NobodyXu]

Yeah, but I guess we don't need to look into zig's caching system? We just need to know that it does.

Yeah I'm just interested in how it works, I do think it's a good idea to support zig-cc, I would work on it after #893 is done

[cathaysia]

I can't find the author's specific description of the zig cache system. Here it may be useful to you:

• https://ziglang.org/download/0.4.0/release-notes.html#Build-Artifact-Caching
• https://apenwarr.ca/log/20181113

Of course, the best thing is probably to read the source code:

• https://github.com/ziglang/zig/blob/bddbbef32b4a42237ca84352a26a93bf250da918/src/cache_hash.hpp
• https://github.com/ziglang/zig/blob/master/lib/std/Build/Cache.zig

[NobodyXu]

Thanks!

I also found the cache dir using zig env and checks its content, now I have a rough idea on how it works.

[thomcc]

The problem with supporting zig is that they don't use a standard names for the different target triples, and have indicated they'll likely change how this works in a future version. We'd need mappings for this and it would be a big pain, as they're likely to change.

In the mean time cargo-zigbuild sets everything right to use cc with zig, I'd recommend that.

Edit: More broadly, this is more work than just supporting zig cc and skipping wrappers. While zig has the ability to provide a nearly-seamless cross-compile experience (it's crazy, honestly -- I use it frequently). We have to correctly use its versions of the rest of the toolchain as well (ar, ranlib, etc). And even then, it's only really worth-while if you're also using it as the linker for the Rust build, hence my cargo-zigbuild suggestion.

When zig hits 1.0, I think I'd be more open to it.

[cathaysia]

emm, let me explain why I don't want rust-zigbuild.

This question originally arose because I wanted to compile some c source code into a static library in rust, the cargo-zigbuild was descripted "Compile Cargo project with zig as linker", but I don't need using it as a linker.

so I use cc-rs, and pass zig's triple to $CC, it works fine. I open this issue in the hope that cc can solve some common problems (for example, a compiler like zig cc can only be passed through $CC, but not through the compiler function).

Of course, I now know why my cross-compiling with clang failed (because the nix-shell I used replaced the default clang, and the clang they provided added some OS-specific parameters, and just needed to change the compiler to the system The default will do)

[NobodyXu]

P.S. cargo-zigbuild cc can be used as a wrapper, though I do think cc should support zig-cc

[cathaysia]

ok, so let's close this issue

[NobodyXu]

cc @cathaysia I now think rustup should ship zig-cc for cc-rs to use and use it for linking

https://internals.rust-lang.org/t/bundle-zig-cc-in-rustup-by-default/22096