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by drdexebtjl 11 days ago
You can continue to compile as before by using a previous version of the Zig compiler. You even get a 100% byte-for-byte match with reproducible builds.

Why are we so obsessed with updating dependencies, and at the same time, not willing to put in the work to update our own code?

The result of Zig’s approach is that the ecosystem of packages is very active, quickly updating to use the latest language features, and with a good foundation of tests that catch regressions.

1 comments

Why are we so obsessed with updating dependencies, and at the same time, not willing to put in the work to update our own code?

because i want to benefit from the improvements/bug fixes in the dependencies, whereas updating my own code does not bring any improvements (unless it is taking advantage of a new feature in the dependencies) and for a large project can be very expensive.

more practically for my work, i need to be able to compile my application with a compiler that is actively supported, but i have no budget to rewrite old code just because the compiler developers decided to break old functionality.