Zig: Package Management Moved from Compiler to Build System

ziglang.org

18 points·olzhasar··7 comments

That's TLS, crypto, and git-protocol code physically leaving the process that turns your source into machine code, and compiling the fetcher in ReleaseSafe while the compiler itself doesn't is the right call for code parsing untrusted network input.

> This means that large parts of what used to be included in the compiler executable are now shipped in source form instead, including:

For some strange reason now it became fashionable to treat compiled languages as if they were scripting languages.

Go did the same a few releases ago.

Just ship a JIT as well, if the goal is to have each user compile the code.

I truly don’t understand what value a JIT would provide here. Especially in Zigs case. The language allows for full pre-compilation and the compiler is so blazingly fast it’ll finish compiling faster than the startup time of some interpreted languages. So what would adding an interpreter/JIT achieve? Absolutely nothing.

Seems to me the idea of using a JIT here is just because it’s fashionable, not because it solves a real problem.

More like why are we turning Go and Zig into Gentoo?

It is like the dumb idea of header only libraries, most likely pushed by folks that only did scripting languages before coming into a compiled language.

"Linkers? What are those for?"

Why a JIT when they have AOT? Shipping the source code means they can ship the same thing to every target instead of dealing with multiple binaries, at the small cost of compilation the first time you use it.

Gotta love the Gentoo culture.

Submissions (from 3rd party sources) on Dlang, Vlang, or other language will "magically disappear", but posts on Zig that come straight from the source are fully HN approved and constantly churned out (almost daily) as if from a marketing propaganda factory.

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