[generichuman]

This is very exciting for zig projects linking C libraries. Though I'm curious about the following case:

Let's say I'm building a C program targeting Windows with MinGW & only using Zig as a cross compiler. Is there a way to still statically link MinGW's libc implementation or does this mean that's going away and I can only statically link ziglibc even if it looks like MinGW from the outside?

[AndyKelley]

This use case is unchanged.

If you specify -target x86_64-windows-gnu -lc then some libc functions are provided by Zig, some are provided by vendored mingw-w64 C files, and you don't need mingw-w64 installed separately; Zig provides everything.

You can still pass --libc libc.txt to link against an externally provided libc, such as a separate mingw-w64 installation you have lying around, or even your own libc installation if you want to mess around with that.

Both situations unchanged.

[generichuman]

That's cool. I imagine I could also maintain a MinGW package that can be downloaded through the Zig package manager and statically linked without involving the zig libc? (Such that the user doesn't need to install anything but zig)

That's a good way to sell moving over to the zig build system, and eventually zig the language itself in some real-world scenarios imo.

[dnautics]

do you suspect it will be possible to implement printf??

while we're talking about printf, can i incept in you the idea of making an io.printf function that does print-then-flush?

[Cloudef]

It's completely possible to implement printf. here is my impl (not 100% correct yet) of snprintf for my custom libc implemented on top of a platform I'm working on <https://zigbin.io/ab1e79> The va_arg stuff are extern because zig's va arg stuff is pretty broken at the moment. Here's a C++ game ported to web using said libc running on top of the custom platform and web frontend that implements the platform ABI <https://cloudef.pw/sorvi/#supertux.sorvi> (you might need javascript.options.wasm_js_promise_integration enabled if using firefox based browser)

[dnautics]

yeah I just thought there are "compiler shenanigans" involved with printf! zig's va arg being broken is sad, I am so zig-pilled, I wish we could just call extern "C" functions with a tuple in place of va arg =D

[Cloudef]

The only thing C compilers do for printf, is static analyze the format string for API usage errors. Afaik such isn't possible in zig currently. But idk why'd you downgrade yourself to using the printf interface, when std.Io.Writer has a `print` interface where fmt is comptime and args can be reflected so it catches errors without special compiler shenigans.

[dnautics]

I'm thinking: do a translate-c and then statically catch errors using my zig-clr tool.