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Comment by synergy20 | Hacker News Reader

generally speaking, cross compilation is a solved problem for common cpus on the market. on linux it's an installation step away, prepackaged and ready to use.

for newer chips or some vendor-optimized-purpose etc, you have to rely on vendor's SDKs, zig can not help there either.

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The selling point is not merely cross-compilation; as pointed out in the other thread, it's the any-to-any cross-compilation for any supported target. With Zig, you get to download the compiler for any supported host target and then build binaries for Linux, macOS, Windows, FreeBSD, and NetBSD. In the near future, I intend to expand that list to include OpenBSD, illumos, and SerenityOS too.

I really appreciate the enormous amount of work that has gone into Zig.

Let me clarify my goal here: by writing this article I hope to hear solid counterpoints to the first one, which I didn't find very convincing, and to start a more constructive discussion.

I'm also curious, how hard is it to a new target in Zig? For example, FreeBSD and NetBSD are already supported, but OpenBSD isn't yet. What are the main challenges blocking that?

Dude your article got flagged, which means it's no longer on the feed.

If you ever use LLMs for "technical accuracy" again, maybe actually test things on the command line.

Are you a moderator?

Sorry for all the negativity. I added some clarifications, but it might have been a bit too late.

It's not just a matter of who is a moderator. It can be about the topic, what you are saying, or guideline issue. For clarification, you have to email HN.

Yeah, but doesn't that also apply to GCC or LLVM? Download the target-system version and go compiling away. That is not unique to ZIG.

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