0.3.0 Release Notes

Download & Documentation

Zig is an open-source programming language designed for robustness, optimality, and clarity. Zig is aggressively pursuing its goal of overthrowing C as the de facto language for system programming. Zig intends to be so practical that people find themselves using it even if they dislike it.

This is a massive release, featuring 6 months of work and changes from 36 different contributors.

I tried to give credit where credit is due, but it’s inevitable I missed some contributions as I had to go through 1,345 commits to type up these release notes. I apologize in advance for any mistakes.

Special thanks to my patrons who provide financial support. You’re making Zig sustainable.

Stack Traces on All Targets

Zig uses LLVM’s debug info API to emit native debugging information on all targets. This means that you can use native debugging tools on Zig code, for example:

• MSVC on Windows
• lldb on MacOS
• gdb and valgrind on Linux

In addition, Zig’s standard library can read its own native debug information. This means that crashes produce stack traces, and errors produce Error Return Traces.

MacOS

This implementation is able to look at the executable’s own memory to find out where the .o files are, which have the DWARF info.

Windows

Thanks to Sahnvour for implementing the PE parsing and starting the effort to PDB parsing. I picked up where he left off and finished Windows stack traces.

Thanks to Zachary Turner from the LLVM project for helping me understand the PDB format. I still owe LLVM some PDB documentation patches in return.

Similar to on MacOS, a Windows executable in memory has location information pointing to a .pdb file which contains debug information.

Linux

Linux stack traces worked in 0.2.0. However now std.debug.dumpStackTrace & friends use ArenaAllocator backed by DirectAllocator. This has the downside of failing to print a stack trace when the system is out of memory, but for the more common use case when the system is not out of memory, but the debug info cannot fit in std.debug.global_allocator, now stack traces will work. This is the case for the self hosted compiler. There is a proposal to mmap() debug info rather than using read().

See also Compatibility with Valgrind.

zig fmt

Thanks to Jimmi Holst Christensen’s dilligent work, the Zig standard library now supports parsing Zig code. This API is used to implement zig fmt, a tool that reformats code to fit the canonical style.

As an example, zig fmt will change this code:

test "fmt" { const a = []u8{     1, 2, //     3,     4, // foo     5,     6,     7 };          switch (0) { 0 => {}, 1 => unreachable, 2,             3 => {}, 4...7 => {}, 1 + 4 * 3 + 22 => {}, else => { const a = 1; const b = a; }, }      foo(a, b, c, d, e, f, g,); }

…into this code:

test "fmt" {     const a = []u8{         1, 2,         3, 4, // foo         5, 6,         7,     };     switch (0) {         0 => {},         1 => unreachable,         2, 3 => {},         4...7 => {},         1 + 4 * 3 + 22 => {},         else => {             const a = 1;             const b = a;         },     }      foo(         a,         b,         c,         d,         e,         f,         g,     ); }

It does not make any decisions about line widths. That is left up to the user. However, it follows certain cues about when to line break. For example, it will put the same number of array items in a line as there are in the first one. And it will put a function call all on one line if there is no trailing comma, but break every parameter into its own line if there is a trailing comma.

Thanks to Marc Tiehuis, there are currently two editor plugins that integrate with zig fmt:

• Vim
• VSCode

zig fmt is only implemented in the self-hosted compiler, which is not finished yet, so in order to use it one must follow the README instructions to build the self-hosted compiler from source.

The implementation of the self-hosted parser is an interesting case study of avoiding recursion by using an explicit stack. It is essentially a hand-written recursive descent parser, but with heap allocations instead of recursion. When Jimmi originally implemented the code, we thought that we could not solve the unbounded stack growth problem of recursion. However, since then, I prototyped several solutions that provide the ability to have recursive function calls without giving up statically known upper bound stack growth. See Recursion Status for more details.

Automatic formatting can be disabled in source files with a comment like this:

// zig fmt: off test     "this is left alone"  {   } // zig fmt: on

zig fmt is written using the standard library’s event-based I/O abstractions and async/await syntax, which means that it is multi-threaded with non-blocking I/O. A debug build of zig fmt on my laptop formats the entire Zig standard library in 2.1 seconds, which is 75,516 lines per second. See Concurrency Status for more details.

zig run

zig run file.zig can now be used to execute a file directly.

Thanks to Marc Tiehuis for the initial implementation of this feature. Marc writes:

On a POSIX system, a shebang can be used to run a zig file directly. An example shebang would be #!/usr/bin/zig run. You may not be able pass extra compile arguments currently as part of the shebang. Linux for example treats all arguments after the first as a single argument which will result in an ‘invalid command’.

Note: there is a proposal to change this to zig file.zig to match the interface of other languages, as well as enable the common pattern #!/usr/bin/env zig.

Zig caches the binary generated by zig run so that subsequent invocations have low startup cost. See Build Artifact Caching for more details.

Automated Static Linux x86_64 Builds of Master Branch

Zig now supports building statically against musl libc.

On every master branch push, the continuous integration server creates a static Linux build of zig and updates the URL https://ziglang.org/builds/zig-linux-x86_64-master.tar.xz to redirect to it.

In addition, Zig now looks for libc and Zig std lib at runtime. This makes static builds the easiest and most reliable way to start using the latest version of Zig immediately.

Windows has automated static builds of master branch via AppVeyor.

MacOS static CI builds are in progress and should be available soon.

Pointer Reform

During this release cycle, two design flaws were fixed, which led to a chain reaction of changes that I called Pointer Reform, resulting in a more consistent syntax with simpler semantics.

The first design flaw was that the syntax for pointers was ambiguous if the pointed to type was a type. Consider this 0.2.0 code:

const assert = @import("std").debug.assert;  comptime {     var a: i32 = 1;     const b = &a;     @compileLog(@typeOf(b));     *b = 2;     assert(a == 2); }

This works fine. The value printed from the @compileLog statement is &i32. This makes sense because b is a pointer to a.

Now let’s do it with a type:

const assert = @import("std").debug.assert;  comptime {     var a: type = i32;     const b = &a;     @compileLog(b);     *b = f32;     assert(a == f32); }

$ zig build-obj test.zig  | &i32 test.zig:6:5: error: found compile log statement     @compileLog(b);     ^ test.zig:7:5: error: attempt to dereference non-pointer type 'type'     *b = f32;     ^

It doesn’t work in 0.2.0, because the & operator worked differently for type than other types. Here, b is the type &i32 instead of a pointer to a type which is how we wanted to use it.

This prevented other things from working too; for example if you had a []type{i32, u8, f64} and you tried to use a for loop, it crashed the compiler because internally a for loop uses the & operator on the array element.

The only reasonable solution to this is to have different syntax for the address-of operator and the pointer operator, rather than them both being &.

So pointer syntax becomes *T, matching syntax from most other languages such as C. Address-of syntax remains &foo, again matching common address-of syntax such as in C. This leaves one problem though.

With this modification, the syntax *foo becomes ambiguous with the syntax for dereferencing. And so dereferencing syntax is changed to a postfix operator: foo.*. This matches post-fix indexing syntax: foo[0], and in practice ends up harmonizing nicely with other postfix operators.

The other design flaw is a problem that has plagued C since its creation: the pointer type doesn’t tell you how many items there are at the address. This is now fixed by having two kinds of pointers in Zig:

• *T – pointer to exactly one item.
  • Supports deref syntax: ptr.*
• [*]T – pointer to unknown number of items.
  • Supports index syntax: ptr[i]
  • Supports slice syntax: ptr[start..end]
  • T must have a known size, which means that it cannot be c_void or any other @OpaqueType().

Note that this causes pointers to arrays to fall into place, as a single-item pointer to an array acts as a pointer to a compile-time known number of items:

• *[N]T – pointer to N items, same as single-item pointer to array.
  • Supports index syntax: array_ptr[i]
  • Supports slice syntax: array_ptr[start..end]
  • Supports len property: array_ptr.len

Consider how slices fit into this picture:

• []T – pointer to runtime-known number of items.
  • Supports index syntax: slice[i]
  • Supports slice syntax: slice[start..end]
  • Supports len property: slice.len

This makes Zig pointers significantly less error prone. For example, it fixed issue #386, which demonstrates how a pointer to an array in Zig 0.2.0 is a footgun when passed as a parameter. Meanwhile in 0.3.0, equivalent code is nearly impossible to get wrong.

For consistency with the postfix pointer dereference operator, optional unwrapping syntax is now postfix as well:

0.2.0: ??x

0.3.0: x.?

And finally, to remove the last inconsistency of optional syntax, the ?? operator is now the keyword orelse. This means that Zig now has the property that all control flow occurs exclusively via keywords.

There is a plan for one more pointer type, which is a pointer that has a null-terminated number of items. This would be the type of the parameter to strlen for example. Although this will make the language bigger by adding a new type, it allows Zig to delete a feature in exchange, since it will make C string literals unnecessary. String literals will both have a compile-time known length and be null-terminated; therefore they will implicitly cast to slices as well as null-terminated pointers.

There is one new issue caused by Pointer Reform. Because C does not have the concept of single-item pointers or unknown-length pointers (or non-null pointers), Zig must translate all C pointers as ?[*]T. That is, a pointer to an unknown number of items that might be null. This can cause some friction when using C APIs, which is unfortunate because Zig’s types are perfectly compatible with C’s types, but .h files are unable to adequately describe pointers. Although it would be much safer to translate .h files offline and fix their prototypes, there is a proposal to add a C pointer type. This new pointer type should never be used on purpose, but would be used when auto-translating C code. It would simply have C pointer semantics, which means it would be just as much of a footgun as C pointers are. The upside is that it would make interaction with C APIs go back to being perfectly seamless.

Default Float Mode is now Strict

In response to an overwhelming consensus, floating point operations use Strict mode by default. Code can use @setFloatMode to override the mode on a per-scope basis.

Thanks to Marc Tiehuis for implementing the change.

Remove this

this was always a weird language feature. An identifier which referred to the thing in the most immediate scope, which could be a module, a type, a function, or even a block of code.

The main use case for it was for anonymous structs to refer to themselves. This use case is solved with a new builtin function, @This(), which always returns the innermost struct or union that the builtin call is inside.

The “block of code” type is removed from Zig, and the first argument of @setFloatMode is removed. @setFloatMode now always refers to the current scope.

Remove Explicit Casting Syntax

Previously, these two lines would have different meanings:

export fn foo(x: u32) void {     const a: u8 = x;     const b = u8(x); }

The assignment to a would give error: expected type 'u8', found 'u32', because not all values of u32 can fit in a u8. But the assignment to b was “cast harder” syntax, and Zig would truncate bits, with a safety check to ensure that the mathematical meaning of the integer was preserved.

Now, both lines are identical in semantics. There is no more “cast harder” syntax. Both cause the compile error because implicit casts are only allowed when it is completely unambiguous how to get from one type to another, and the transformation is guaranteed to be safe. For other casts, Zig has builtin functions:

• @bitCast – change type but maintain bit representation
• @alignCast – make a pointer have more alignment
• @boolToInt – convert true to 1 and false to 0
• @bytesToSlice – convert a slice of bytes to a slice of another type
• @enumToInt – obtain the integer tag value of an enum or tagged union
• @errSetCast – convert to a smaller error set
• @errorToInt – obtain the integer value of an error code
• @floatCast – convert a larger float to a smaller float
• @floatToInt – obtain the integer part of a float value
• @intCast – convert between integer types
• @intToEnum – obtain an enum value based on its integer tag value
• @intToError – obtain an error code based on its integer value
• @intToFloat – convert an integer to a float value
• @intToPtr – convert an address to a pointer
• @ptrCast – convert between pointer types
• @ptrToInt – obtain the address of a pointer
• @sliceToBytes – convert a slice of anything to a slice of bytes
• @truncate – convert between integer types, chopping off bits

Some are safe; some are not. Some perform language-level assertions; some do not. Some are no-ops at runtime; some are not. Each casting function is documented independently.

Having explicit and fine-grained casting like this is a form of intentional redundancy. Casts are often the source of bugs, and therefore it is worth double-checking a cast to verify that it is still correct when the type of the operand changes. For example, imagine that we have the following code:

fn foo(x: i32) void {     var i = @intCast(usize, x); }

Now consider what happens when the type of x changes to a pointer:

test.zig:2:29: error: expected integer type, found '*i32'     var i = @intCast(usize, x);                             ^

Although we technically know how to convert a pointer to an integer, because we used @intCast, we are forced to inspect the cast and change it appropriately. Perhaps that means changing it to @ptrToInt, or perhaps the entire function needs to be reworked in response to the type change.

Direct Parameter Passing

Previously, it was illegal to pass structs and unions by value in non-extern functions. Instead one would have to have the function accept a const pointer parameter. This was to avoid the ambiguity that C programs face – having to make the decision about whether by-value or by-reference was better. However, there were some problems with this. For example, when the parameter type is inferred, Zig would automatically convert to a const pointer. This caused problems in generic code, which could not distinguish between a type which is a pointer, and a type which has been automatically converted to a pointer.

Now, parameters can be passed directly:

const assert = @import("std").debug.assert;  const Foo = struct {     x: i32,     y: i32, };  fn callee(foo: Foo) void {     assert(foo.y == 2); }  test "pass directly" {     callee(Foo{ .x = 1, .y = 2 }); }

I have avoided using the term “by-value” because the semantics of this kind of parameter passing are different:

• Zig is free to pass the parameter by value – perhaps if it is smaller than some number of bytes – or pass it by reference.
• To the callee, the value appears to be a value and is immutable.
• The caller guarantees that the bytes of the parameter will not change for the duration of the call. This means that it is unsound to pass a global variable in this way if that global variable is mutated by the callee. There is an open issue which explores adding runtime safety checks for this.

Because of these semantics, there’s a clear flow chart for whether to accept a parameter as T or *const T:

• Use T, unless one of the following is true:
  • The function depends on the address of the parameter.
  • The parameter may alias another parameter or global variable.

Now that we have this kind of parameter passing, Zig’s implicit cast from T to *const T is less important. One might even make the case that such a cast is dangerous. Therefore we have a proposal to remove it.

There is one more area that needs consideration with regards to direct parameter passing, and that is with coroutines. The problem is that if a reference to a stack variable is passed to a coroutine, it may become invalid after the coroutine suspends. This is a design flaw in Zig that will be addressed in a future version. See Concurrency Status for more details.

Note that extern functions are bound by the C ABI, and therefore none of this applies to them.

Rewrite Rand Functions

Marc Tiehuis writes:

We now use a generic Rand structure which abstracts the core functions from the backing engine.

The old Mersenne Twister engine is removed and replaced instead with three alternatives:

• Pcg32
• Xoroshiro128+
• Isaac64

These should provide sufficient coverage for most purposes, including a CSPRNG using Isaac64. Consumers of the library that do not care about the actual engine implementation should use DefaultPrng and DefaultCsprng.

Error Return Traces across async/await

One of the problems with non-blocking programming is that stack traces and exceptions are less useful, because the actual stack trace points back to the event loop code.

In Zig 0.3.0, Error Return Traces work across suspend points. This means you can use try as the main error handling strategy, and when an error bubbles up all the way, you’ll still be able to find out where it came from:

test "fmt" {     const a = []u8{         1, 2,         3, 4, // foo         5, 6,         7,     };     switch (0) {         0 => {},         1 => unreachable,         2, 3 => {},         4...7 => {},         1 + 4 * 3 + 22 => {},         else => {             const a = 1;             const b = a;         },     }      foo(         a,         b,         c,         d,         e,         f,         g,     ); }

0

test "fmt" {     const a = []u8{         1, 2,         3, 4, // foo         5, 6,         7,     };     switch (0) {         0 => {},         1 => unreachable,         2, 3 => {},         4...7 => {},         1 + 4 * 3 + 22 => {},         else => {             const a = 1;             const b = a;         },     }      foo(         a,         b,         c,         d,         e,         f,         g,     ); }

1

Note that this output contains 3 components:

• An error message: attempt to unwrap error: FileNotFound
• An error return trace. The error was first returned at fs.zig:367:5 and then returned at fs.zig:374:13. You could go look at those source locations for more information.
• A stack trace. Once the error came back from openRead, the code tried to catch unreachable which caused the panic. You can see that the stack trace does, in fact, go into the event loop as described above.

It is important to note in this example, that the error return trace survived despite the fact that the event loop is multi-threaded, and any one of those threads could be the worker thread that resumes an async function at the await point.

This feature is enabled by default for Debug and ReleaseSafe builds, and disabled for ReleaseFast and ReleaseSmall builds.

This is just the beginning of an exploration of what debugging non-blocking behavior could look like in the future of Zig. See Concurrency Status for more details.

New Async Call Syntax

Instead of async(allocator) call(), now it is async<allocator> call().

This fixes syntax ambiguity when leaving off the allocator, and fixes parse failure when call is a field access.

This sets a precedent for using < > to pass arguments to a keyword. This will affect enum, union, fn, and align (see #661).

ReleaseSmall Mode

Alexandros Naskos contributed a new build mode.

test "fmt" {     const a = []u8{         1, 2,         3, 4, // foo         5, 6,         7,     };     switch (0) {         0 => {},         1 => unreachable,         2, 3 => {},         4...7 => {},         1 + 4 * 3 + 22 => {},         else => {             const a = 1;             const b = a;         },     }      foo(         a,         b,         c,         d,         e,         f,         g,     ); }

2

• Medium runtime performance
• Safety checks disabled
• Slow compilation speed
• Small binary size

New builtins: @typeInfo and @field

Alexandros Naskos bravely dove head-first into the deepest, darkest parts of the Zig compiler and implemented an incredibly useful builtin function: @typeInfo.

This function accepts a type as a parameter, and returns a compile-time known value of this type:

test "fmt" {     const a = []u8{         1, 2,         3, 4, // foo         5, 6,         7,     };     switch (0) {         0 => {},         1 => unreachable,         2, 3 => {},         4...7 => {},         1 + 4 * 3 + 22 => {},         else => {             const a = 1;             const b = a;         },     }      foo(         a,         b,         c,         d,         e,         f,         g,     ); }

3

This kicks open the door for compile-time reflection, especially when combined with the fact that Jimmi Holst Christensen implemented @field, which performs field access with a compile-time known name:

test "fmt" {     const a = []u8{         1, 2,         3, 4, // foo         5, 6,         7,     };     switch (0) {         0 => {},         1 => unreachable,         2, 3 => {},         4...7 => {},         1 + 4 * 3 + 22 => {},         else => {             const a = 1;             const b = a;         },     }      foo(         a,         b,         c,         d,         e,         f,         g,     ); }

4

This has the potential to be abused, and so the feature should be used carefully.

After Jimmi implemented @field, he improved the implementation of @typeInfo and fixed several bugs. And now, the combination of these builtins is used to implement struct printing in userland:

test "fmt" {     const a = []u8{         1, 2,         3, 4, // foo         5, 6,         7,     };     switch (0) {         0 => {},         1 => unreachable,         2, 3 => {},         4...7 => {},         1 + 4 * 3 + 22 => {},         else => {             const a = 1;             const b = a;         },     }      foo(         a,         b,         c,         d,         e,         f,         g,     ); }

5

Output:

test "fmt" {     const a = []u8{         1, 2,         3, 4, // foo         5, 6,         7,     };     switch (0) {         0 => {},         1 => unreachable,         2, 3 => {},         4...7 => {},         1 + 4 * 3 + 22 => {},         else => {             const a = 1;             const b = a;         },     }      foo(         a,         b,         c,         d,         e,         f,         g,     ); }

6

See std/fmt/index.zig:15 for the implementation.

Now that we have @typeInfo, there is one more question to answer: should there be a function which accepts a TypeInfo value, and makes a type out of it?

This hypothetical feature is called @reify, and it’s a hot topic. Although undeniably powerful and useful, there is concern that it would be too powerful, leading to complex meta-programming that goes against the spirit of simplicity that Zig stands for.

Improve cmpxchg

@cmpxchg is removed. @cmpxchgStrong and @cmpxchgWeak are added.

The functions have operand type as the first parameter.

The return type is ?T where T is the operand type.

New Type: f16

Ben Noordhuis implemented f16. This is guaranteed to be IEEE-754-2008 binary16 format, even on systems that have no hardware support, thanks to the additions to compiler_rt that Ben contributed. He also added support for f16 to std.math functions such as isnormal and fabs.

All Integer Sizes are Primitives

Zig 0.2.0 had primitive types for integer bit widths of 2-8, 16, 29, 32, 64, 128. Any number other than that, and you had to use @IntType to create the type. But you would get a compile error if you shadowed one of the above bit widths that already existed, for example with

test "fmt" {     const a = []u8{         1, 2,         3, 4, // foo         5, 6,         7,     };     switch (0) {         0 => {},         1 => unreachable,         2, 3 => {},         4...7 => {},         1 + 4 * 3 + 22 => {},         else => {             const a = 1;             const b = a;         },     }      foo(         a,         b,         c,         d,         e,         f,         g,     ); }

7

Needless to say, this situation was unnecessarily troublesome (#745). And so now arbitrary bit-width integers can be referenced by using an identifier of i or u followed by digits. For example, the identifier i7 refers to a signed 7-bit integer.

u0 is a 0-bit type, which means:

• @sizeOf(u0) == 0
• No actual code is generated for loads and stores of this type of value.
• The value of a u0 as always the compile-time known value of 0.

i0 doesn’t make sense and will probably crash the compiler.

Although Zig defines arbitrary integer sizes to support all primitive operations, if you try to use, for example, multiplication on 256-bit integers:

test "fmt" {     const a = []u8{         1, 2,         3, 4, // foo         5, 6,         7,     };     switch (0) {         0 => {},         1 => unreachable,         2, 3 => {},         4...7 => {},         1 + 4 * 3 + 22 => {},         else => {             const a = 1;             const b = a;         },     }      foo(         a,         b,         c,         d,         e,         f,         g,     ); }

8

Then you’ll get an error like this:

test "fmt" {     const a = []u8{         1, 2,         3, 4, // foo         5, 6,         7,     };     switch (0) {         0 => {},         1 => unreachable,         2, 3 => {},         4...7 => {},         1 + 4 * 3 + 22 => {},         else => {             const a = 1;             const b = a;         },     }      foo(         a,         b,         c,         d,         e,         f,         g,     ); }

9

Zig isn’t supposed to be letting LLVM leak through here, but that’s a separate issue. What’s happening is that normally if a primitive operation such as multiplication of integers cannot be lowered to a machine instruction, LLVM will emit a library call to compiler_rt to perform the operation. This works for up to 128-bit multiplication, for example. However compiler_rt does not define an arbitrary precision multiplication library function, and so LLVM is not able to generate code.

It is planned to submit a patch to LLVM which adds the ability to emit a lib call for situations like this, and then Zig will include the arbitrary precision multiplication function in Zig’s compiler_rt.

In addition to this, Zig 0.3.0 fixes a bug where @IntType was silently wrapping the bit count parameter if it was greater than pow(2, 32).

Improved f128 Support

Marc Tiehuis & Ben Noordhuis solved the various issues that prevented f128 from being generally useful.

• Fix hex-float parsing. -Marc Tiehuis (#495)
• Add compiler-rt functions to support f128. -Marc Tiehuis
  • __floatunditf
  • __floatunsitf
  • __floatunsitf
  • __floatuntitf
  • __floatuntisf
  • __trunctfdf2
  • __trunctfsf2
  • __floattitf
  • __floattidf
  • __floattisf
• Alignment fix and allow rudimentary f128 float printing. -Marc Tiehuis
• Fix f128 remainder division bug. The modulo operation computed rem(b+rem(a,b), b) which produces -1 for a=1 and b=2. Switch to a – b * trunc(a/b) which produces the expected result, 1. -Ben Noordhuis (#1137)

Build Artifact Caching

Zig now supports global build artifact caching. This feature is one of those things that you can generally ignore, because it “just works” without any babysitting.

By default, compilations are not cached. You can enable the global cache for a compilation by using --cache on:

// zig fmt: off test     "this is left alone"  {   } // zig fmt: on

0

When the cache is on, the output is not written to the current directory. Instead, the output is kept in the cache directory, and the path to it is printed to stdout.

This is off by default, because this is an uncommon use case. The real benefit of build artifact caching comes in 3 places:

• zig run, where it is enabled by default:

  // zig fmt: off test     "this is left alone"  {   } // zig fmt: on

  1

• zig build, so that your build script only has to build once.
• When building an executable or shared library, Zig must build compiler_rt.o and builtin.o from source, for the given target. This usually only has to be done once ever, which is why other compilers such as gcc ship with these components already built. The problem with that strategy is that you have to build a special version of the compiler for cross-compiling. With Zig, you can always build for any target, on any target.

  So caching these artifacts provides a happy solution.

The cache is perfect; there are no false positives. You could even fix a bug in memcpy in the system’s libc, and Zig will detect that its own code has (indirectly) been updated, and invalidate the cache entry.

If you use zig build-exe, Zig will still create a zig-cache directory in the current working directory in order to store an intermediate .o file. This is because on MacOS, the intermediate .o file stores the debug information, and therefore it needs to stick around somewhere sensible for Stack Traces to work.

Likewise, if you use zig test, Zig will put the test binary in the zig-cache directory in the current working directory. It’s useful to leave the test binary here so that the programmer can use a debugger on it or otherwise inspect it.

The zig-cache directory is cleaner than before, however. For example, the builtin.zig file is no longer created there. It participates in the global caching system, just like compiler_rt.o. You can use zig builtin to see the contents of @import("builtin").

Compatibility with Valgrind

I noticed that valgrind does not see Zig’s debug symbols (#896):

// zig fmt: off test     "this is left alone"  {   } // zig fmt: on

2

// zig fmt: off test     "this is left alone"  {   } // zig fmt: on

3

After digging around, I was able to reproduce the problem using only Clang and LLD:

// zig fmt: off test     "this is left alone"  {   } // zig fmt: on

4

If this C code is built with Clang and linked with LLD, Valgrind has the same issue as with the Zig code.

I sent a message to the Valgrind mailing list, and they suggested submitting a bug fix to Valgrind. That’s a good idea. I’m a little busy with Zig development though – anybody else want to take a crack at it?

In the meantime, Zig now has a --no-rosegment flag, which works around the bug. It should only be used for this purpose; the flag will likely be removed once Valgrind fixes the issue upstream and enough time passes that the new version becomes generally available.

// zig fmt: off test     "this is left alone"  {   } // zig fmt: on

5

Zig is now on Godbolt Compiler Explorer

Marc Tiehuis added Zig support, and then worked with the Compiler Explorer team to get it merged upstream and deployed.

• square function example
• sum over array example –release-small
• sum over array example –release-fast

The command line API that Compiler Explorer uses is covered by Zig’s main test suite to ensure that it continues working as the language evolves.

zig init-lib and init-exe

zig init-lib can be used to initialize a zig build project in the current directory which will create a simple library:

// zig fmt: off test     "this is left alone"  {   } // zig fmt: on

6

Likewise, zig init-exe initializes a simple application:

// zig fmt: off test     "this is left alone"  {   } // zig fmt: on

7

The main Zig test suite tests this functionality so that it will not regress as Zig continues to evolve.

Concurrency Status

Concurrency is now solved. That is, there is a concrete plan for how concurrency will work in Zig, and now it’s a matter of implementing all the pieces.

First and foremost, Zig supports low-level control over hardware. That means that it has atomic primitives:

• @atomicLoad
• @atomicRmw
• @cmpxchgStrong
• @cmpxchgWeak
• @fence

…and it means that you can directly spawn kernel threads using standard library functions:

// zig fmt: off test     "this is left alone"  {   } // zig fmt: on

8

On POSIX targets, when you link against libc, the standard library uses pthreads; otherwise it uses its own lightweight kernel thread implementation.

You can use mutexes, signals, condition variables, and all those things. Anything you can accomplish in C, you can accomplish in Zig.

However, the standard library provides a higher level concurrency abstraction, designed for optimal performance, debuggability, and structuring code to closely model the problems that concurrency presents.

The abstraction is built on two language features: stackless coroutines and async/await syntax. Everything else is implemented in userland.

std.event.Loop creates a kernel thread pool matching the number of logical CPUs. It can then be used for non-blocking I/O that will be dispatched across the thread pool, using the platform-native API:

• Windows – I/O Completion Ports
• MacOS – kqueue
• Linux – epoll

This is a competitor to libuv, except multi-threaded.

Once you have an event loop, all of the std.event API becomes available to use:

• std.event.Channel – Many producer, many consumer, thread-safe, runtime configurable buffer size. When buffer is empty, consumers suspend and are resumed by producers. When buffer is full, producers suspend and are resumed by consumers.
• std.event.Future – A value that many consumers can await.
• std.event.Group – A way to await multiple async operations.
• std.event.Lock – Ensures only one thread gets access to a resource, without blocking a kernel thread.
• std.event.RwLock – Same as Lock except allows multiple readers to access data simultaneously.
• std.event.fs – File system operations based on async/await syntax.
• std.event.tcp – Network operations based on async/await syntax.

All of these abstractions provide convenient APIs based on async/await syntax, making it practical for API users to model their code with maximally efficient concurrency. None of these abstractions block or use mutexes; when an API user must suspend, control flow goes to the next coroutine waiting to run, if any. If no coroutines are waiting to run, the application will sit idly, waiting for an event from the respective platform-native API (e.g. epoll on Linux).

As an example, here is a snippet from a test in the standard library:

// zig fmt: off test     "this is left alone"  {   } // zig fmt: on

9

You can see that even though Zig is a language with manual memory management that insists on handling every possible error, it manages to be quite high level using these event-based APIs.

Now, there are some problems to solve:

• The way that canceling a coroutine works is currently unsound. – I know how to fix this, but it’ll have to be in 0.4.0. Unfortunately it’s causing occasional test failures.
• Lack of a guarantee about whether an async function call allocates memory or not. – In theory, there are many cases where Zig should be able to guarantee that an async function call will not allocate memory for the coroutine frame. However in practice, using LLVM’s coroutines API, it will always result in an allocation.
• LLVM’s coroutines implementation is buggy – Right now Zig sadly is forced to disable optimizations for async functions because LLVM has a bug where Mem2Reg turns correct coroutine frame spills back into incorrect parameter references.
• LLVM’s coroutines implementation is slow – When I analyzed the compilation speed of Zig, even with optimizations off, LLVM takes up over 80% of the time. And for the zig behavioral tests, even though coroutines are a tiny percent of the code, LLVM’s coroutine splitting pass takes up 30% of that time.

And so, the plan is to rework coroutines, without using any of LLVM’s coroutines API. Zig will implement coroutines in the frontend, and LLVM will see only functions and structs. This is how Rust does it, and I think it was a strong choice.

The coroutine frame will be in a struct, and so Zig will know the size of it at compile-time, and it will solve the problem of guaranteeing allocation elision – the async callsite will simply have to provide the coroutine frame pointer in order to create the promise.

This will also be relevant for recursion; stackless function calls do not count against the static stack size upper bound calculation. See Recursion Status for more details.

Self-Hosted Compiler Status

The self-hosted compiler is well underway. Here’s a 1 minute demo of the self-hosted compiler watching source files and rebuilding.

The self-hosted compiler cannot do much more than Hello World at the moment, but it’s being constructed from the ground up to fully take advantage of multiple cores and in-memory caching. In addition, Zig’s error system and other safety features are making it easy to write reliable, robust code. Between stack traces, error return traces, and runtime safety checks, I barely even need a debugger.

Marc Tiehuis contributed a Big Integer library, which the self-hosted compiler is using for integer literals and compile-time math operations.

Writing the self-hosted compiler code revealed to me how coroutines should work in Zig. All the little details and ergonomics are clear to me now. And so before I continue any further on the self-hosted compiler, I will use this knowledge to rework coroutines and solve the problems with them. See Concurrency Status for more details.

As a reminder, even when the self-hosted compiler is complete, Zig will forever be stuck with the stage1 C++ compiler code. See The Grand Bootstrapping Plan for more details.

The self-hosted compiler is successfully sharing some C++ code with the stage1 compiler. For example the libLLVM C++ API wrapper is built into a static library, which then exports a C API wrapper. The self-hosted compiler links against this static library in order to make libLLVM C++ API calls via the C API wrapper. In addition, the Microsoft Visual Studio detection code requires the Windows COM API, which is also C++, and so a similar strategy is used. I think it’s pretty neat that the build system builds a static library once and then ends up linking against it twice – one for each of the two compiler stages!

Recursion Status

I’ve said before that recursion is one of the enemies of perfect software, because it represents a way that a program can fail with no foolproof way of preventing it. With recursion, pick any stack size and I’ll give you an input that will crash your program. Embedded developers are all too familiar with this problem.

It’s always possible to rewrite code using an explicit stack using heap allocations, and that’s exactly what Jimmi did in the self-hosted parser.

On the other hand, when recursion fits the problem, it’s significantly more clear and maintainable. It would be a real shame to have to give it up.

I researched different ways that Zig could keep recursion, even when we introduce statically known stack upper bound size. I came up with a proof of concept for @newStackCall, a builtin function that calls a function using an explicitly provided new stack. You can find a usage example in the documentation by following that link.

This works, and it does break call graph cycles, but it would be a little bit awkward to use. Because if you allocate an entire new stack, it has to be big enough for the rest of the stack upper bound size, but in a recursive call, which should be only one stack frame, it would overallocate every time.

So that’s why I think that the actual solution to this problem is Zig’s stackless coroutines. Because Zig’s coroutines are stackless, they are the perfect solution for recursion (direct or indirect). With the reworking of coroutines, it will be possible to put the coroutine frame of an async function anywhere – in a struct, in the stack, in a global variable – as long as it outlives the duration of the coroutine. See Concurrency for more details.

So – although recursion is not yet solved, we know enough to know that recursion is OK to use in Zig. It does suffer from the stack overflow issue today, but in the future we will have a compile error to prevent call graph cycles. And then this hypothetical compile error will be solved by using @newStackCall or stackless functions (but probably stackless functions). Once recursion is solved, if stackless functions turn out to be the better solution, Zig will remove @newStackCall from the language, unless someone demonstrates a compelling use case for it.

For now, use recursion whenever you want; you’ll know when it’s time to update your code.

WebAssembly Status

The pieces for web assembly are starting to come together.

Ben Noordhuis fixed support for --target-arch wasm32 (#1094).

LLVM merged my patch to make WebAssembly a normal (non-experimental) target. But they didn’t do it before the LLVM 7 release. So Zig 0.3.0 will not have WebAssembly support by default, but 0.4.0 will.

That being said, the static builds of Zig provided by ziglang.org have the WebAssembly target enabled.

Apart from this, there appears to be an issue with Zig’s WebAssembly linker. Once this is solved, all that is left is to use WebAssembly in real life use cases, to work out the ergonomics, and solve the inevitable issues that arise.

Documentation

The language reference documentation now contains no JavaScript. The code blocks are pre-formatted with std.zig.Tokenizer. The same is true for these release notes.

The builtin.zig example code in the documentation is now automatically updated from the output of Zig, so the docs can’t get out of date for this.

In addition to the above, the following improvements were made to the documentation:

• Added docs for packed enum.
• Added docs for union methods.
• Added alignment documentation to std.mem.Allocator functions.
• Added docs for Coroutines.
• Added docs for Error Return Traces.
• Clarify that float types are guaranteed to be represented as IEEE 754 in memory.
• Added docs for void.
• Added docs for Casting.
• Improved docs for while and undefined .
• Added docs for Wrong Union Field Access.
• Corrected @memcpy and @memset function signatures. -Marc Tiehuis
• Added docs for Peer Type Resolution.
• Added docs for Exporting a C Library.
• Added docs for labeled while, labeled blocks, and labeled for.

Standard Library API Changes

• std.mem.SplitIterator is now public
• std.math.atan2 is now public
• std.os.linux now makes public all the syscall numbers and syscall functions
• std.math.cast handles signed integers
• added std.zig.parse
• added std.zig.parseStringLiteral
• added std.zig.render
• added std.zig.ast
• added std.zig.Token
• added std.zig.Tokenizer
• added std.io.readLine
• replace File.exists with File.access. -Marc Tiehuis
• rename std.rand.Rand to std.rand.Random
• added common hash/checksum functions. -Marc Tiehuis
  • SipHash64, SipHash128
  • Crc32 (fast + small variants)
  • Adler32
  • Fnv1a (32, 64 and 128 bit variants)
• Add Hmac function -Marc Tiehuis
• Added timestamp, high-perf. timer functions -tgschultz
  • std.os.time.sleep
  • std.os.time.posixSleep
  • std.os.time.timestamp
  • std.os.time.miliTimestamp
  • std.os.time.Timer
• Added complex number support. -Marc Tiehuis
  • std.math.complex.Complex
  • std.math.complex.abs
  • std.math.complex.acos
  • std.math.complex.acosh
  • std.math.complex.arg
  • std.math.complex.asin
  • std.math.complex.asinh
  • std.math.complex.atan
  • std.math.complex.atanh
  • std.math.complex.conj
  • std.math.complex.cos
  • std.math.complex.cosh
  • std.math.complex.exp
  • std.math.complex.log
  • std.math.complex.pow
  • std.math.complex.proj
  • std.math.complex.sinh
  • std.math.complex.sin
  • std.math.complex.sqrt
  • std.math.complex.tanh
  • std.math.complex.tan
  • std.math.complex.ldexp_cexp
• Added more slice manipulation functions. Thanks Braedon Wooding for the original PR. (#944)
  • std.mem.trimLeft
  • std.mem.trimRight
  • std.mem.trimRight
  • std.mem.lastIndexOfScalar
  • std.mem.lastIndexOfAny
  • std.mem.lastIndexOf
  • std.mem.endsWith
• Added std.atomic.Stack
• Added std.atomic.Queue
• Added std.os.spawnThread. It works on all targets. On Linux, when linking libc, it uses pthreads, and when not linking libc, it makes syscalls directly.
• Add JSON decoder. -Marc Tiehuis
  • std.json.Token
  • std.json.StreamingParser
  • std.json.TokenStream
  • std.json.validate
  • std.json.ValueTree
  • std.json.ObjectMap
  • std.json.Value
  • std.json.Parser – A non-stream JSON parser which constructs a tree of Value’s.
• Added std.SegmentedList
• Removed functions from std.Buffer. Instead users should use std.io.BufferOutStream.
  • Removed std.Buffer.appendFormat
  • Removed std.Buffer.appendByte
  • Removed std.Buffer.appendByteNTimes
• Add arbitrary-precision integer to std. -Marc Tiehuis
  • std.math.big.Int
  • std.math.big.Limb
  • std.math.big.DoubleLimb
  • std.math.big.Log2Limb
• std.os.Dir gains Windows support.
• std.os.File.access no longer depends on shlwapi.dll on Windows.
• std.os.path.dirname returns null instead of empty slice when there is no directory component. This makes it harder to write bugs. (#1017)
• Reading from a file can return error.IsDir.
• Added std.math.floatMantissaBits and std.math.floatExponentBits -Marc Tiehuis
• std.mem.Allocator allows allocation of any 0 sized type, not just void. -Jimmi Holst Christensen.
• Added std.os.cpuCount
• Added std.sort.asc and std.sort.desc -Marc Tiehuis
• std.fmt.format add * for formatting things as pointers. (#1285)
• std.fmt.format add integer binary output format. -Marc Tiehuis (#1313)
• Added std.mem.secureZero. -Marc Tiehuis

  This is identical to mem.set(u8, slice, 0) except that it will never be optimized out by the compiler. Intended usage is for clearing secret data.

  The resulting assembly has been manually verified in –release-* modes.

  It would be valuable to test the ‘never be optimized out’ claim in tests but this is harder than initially expected due to how much Zig appears to know locally. May be doable with @intToPtr, @ptrToInt to get around known data dependencies but I could not work it out right now.

• std.fmt.format handles non-pointer struct/union/enums. Adds support for printing structs via reflection. (#1380)
• Many std.os file functions no longer require an allocator. They rely on PATH_MAX, because even Windows, Linux, and MacOS syscalls will fail for paths longer than PATH_MAX.
• Add std.crypto.chaCha20IETF and std.crypto.chaCha20With64BitNonce. -Shawn Landden & Marc Tiehuis
• Add poly1305 and x25519 crypto primitives. -Marc Tiehuis

  These are translated from monocypher which has fairly competitive performance while remaining quite simple.

  Initial performance comparision:

  const assert = @import("std").debug.assert;  comptime {     var a: i32 = 1;     const b = &a;     @compileLog(@typeOf(b));     *b = 2;     assert(a == 2); }

  0 There is room for improvement and no real effort has been made at all in optimization beyond a direct translation.

• Removed deprecated, unused Windows functions
  • std.os.windows.CryptAcquireContextA
  • std.os.windows.CryptReleaseContext
  • std.os.windows.CryptGenRandom

Thank you contributors!

• Tesla Ice Zhang fixed typos in the Zig grammar documentation and created The IntelliJ IDEA plugin for the Zig programming language
• Jay Weisskopf cleaned up the Zig documentation
• hellerve finished the Mac OS dir entry iterator code
• Raul Leal fixed an undeclared identifier error in readUntilDelimiterBuffer and incorrect number of parameters in readUntilDelimiterAlloc (#877)
• Wander Lairson Costa fixed the build process to find libxml2 and zlib correctly. (#847)
• tgschultz added more linux syscalls and constants to the std lib.
• tgschultz fixed compiler errors around Darwin code.
• Harry Eakins added readability improvements and a bug-fix to the standard library crypto throughput test.
• tgschultz Added DirectAllocator support for alignments bigger than os.page_size on posix systems. (#939)
• Braedon Wooding & Josh Wolfe Added UTF-8 encoding and decoding support. (#954)
• Alexandros Naskos Fixed a bug where comptime was being incorrectly applied across function definition boundaries. (#972)
• Braedon Wooding worked towards unifying the std.ArrayList and std.HashMap APIs regarding iteration. (#981)
• Braedon Wooding added documentation for arg types and error inference.
• tgschultz added custom formatter support to std.fmt.format.
• isaachier Fixed const-ness of buffer in std.Buffer.replaceContents method (#1065)
• isaachier Fixed error handling in std.Buffer.fromOwnedSlice. (#1082)
• Arthur Elliott Added std.ArrayList.setOrError so you can set a value without growing the underlying buffer, with range safety checks.
• marleck55 std/fmt: Use lowercase k for kilo in base 1000 (#1090)
• tgschultz added C string to fmt by using {s}. (#1092)
• Alexandros Naskos Fixed optional types of zero bit types. (#1110)
• Jay Weisskopf Made zig version compliant with SemVer with regards to the git revision metadata.
• Sahnvour fixed a compilation error on windows introduced by pointer reform.
• Bodie Solomon Fixed zig not finding std lib files on Darwin when the executable is a symlink. (#1117)
• Isaac Hier Fixed the increment operation for the comptime value -1.
• Isaac Hier Fixed the compiler’s internal path joining function when the dirname is empty.
• tgschultz Fixed standard library regressions from updated syntax. (#1162)
• Isaac Hier Improved the compile error for when the RHS of a shift is too large for the LHS. (#1168)
• Jay Weisskopf Fixed version detection for out-of-source builds.
• Isaac Hier Fixed an assertion crash on enum switch values
• wilsonk Fixed a build error in the crypto throughput test (#1211)
• Bas van den Berg Fixed std.ArrayList.insert and added tests. (#1232)
• tgschultz Added std.ArrayList.swapRemove. (#1230)
• Eduardo Sánchez Muñoz fixed bad code generated when an extern function returns a small struct. (#1234)
• Bas van den Berg fixed aligned reallocation. (#1237)
• Bas van den Berg improved realloc on fixed buffer allocator. (#1238)
• Wink Saville gave ArrayList tests consistent names. (#1253)
• Wink Saville added std.ArrayList.swapRemoveOrError. (#1254)
• Jay Weisskopf Fixed minor documentation errors (#1256)
• kristopher tate Added more std.os.posix constants.
• kristopher tate Made tests skippable by returning error.SkipZigTest
• Nathan Sharp Added std.io.PeekStream and std.io.Slicestream.

  SliceStream is a read-only stream wrapper around a slice of bytes. It allows adapting algorithms which work on InStreams to in-memory data.

  PeekStream is a stream wrapper which allows “putting back” bytes into the stream so that they can be read again. This will help make look-ahead parsers easier to write.

• dbandstra added int writing functions to OutStream, and skipBytes function to InStream (#1300)
• dbandstra add SliceOutStream, rename SliceStream to SliceInStream (#1301)
• Matthew D. Steele added “Comments” section to language reference (#1309)
• kristopher tate Windows: Call RtlGenRandom() instead of CryptGetRandom() (#1319)
• kristopher tate Add builtin function @handle() (#1297)
• kristopher tate better support for `_` identifier (#1204, #1320)
• Matthew D. Steele Fix the start-less-than-end assertion in std.rand.Random.range (#1325)
• Matthew D. Steele Fix a type error in std.os.linux.getpid() (#1326)
• Matthew D. Steele Add thread ID support to std.os.Thread (#1316)
• Shawn Landdendoc: @addWithOverflow also returns if overflow occured
• Shawn Landdenadded a red-black tree implementation to std
• Wink Saville fixed @atomicRmw not type checking correctly.
• prazzb Fixed LLVM detection at build time for some linux distros. (#1378)
• tgschultz fixed handling of [*]u8 when no format specifier is set. (#1379)
• Shawn Landden do not use an allocator when we don’t need to because of the existance of PATH_MAX
• Raul Leal Allow implicit cast from *[N]T to ?[*]T (#1398)
• kristopher tate Added a test for writing u64 integers (#1401)
• tgschultz Fixed compile error when passing enum to fmt
• tgschultz Implemented tagged union support in std.fmt.format (#1432)
• Raul Leal Allow implicit cast from *T and [*]T to ?*c_void
• kristopher tate correct version comparison for detecting msvc (fixes #1438)
• kristopher tate allow bytes to be printed-out as hex (#1358)
• Shawn Landden updated incorrect documentation comments (#1456)
• hfcc Added compilation error when a non-float is given to @floatToInt
• kristopher tate X25519: Fix createPublicKey signature and add test (#1480)
• Sahnvour Fixes a path corruption when compiling on windows. (#1488)
• Bas van den Berg Add capacity and appendAssumeCapacity to ArrayList
• emekoifixed WriteFile segfault
• kristopher tate fixed handling of file paths with spaces in the cache
• Wink Saville fixed build failures of FileOutStream/FileInStream from syntax changes
• emekoifixed compiling on mingw (#1542)
• Raul Leal added builtin functions: @byteOffsetOf and @bitOffsetOf.
• Christian Wesselhoeft fixed BufferOutStream import – it is defined in io.zig.
• Wink Saville fixed a typo in a doc comment
• Wink Saville fixed a build issue with GCC 8
• Wink Saville refactored some parsing code in the self-hosted compiler
• Jay Weisskopf improved the help output of the command line interface

Miscellaneous Improvements

• LLVM, Clang, and LLD dependencies are updated to 7.0.0.
• Greatly increased test coverage.
• std.os – getting dir entries works on Mac OS.
• allow integer and float literals to be passed to var params. See #623
• add @sqrt built-in function. #767
• The compiler exits with error code instead of abort() for file not found.
• Add @atomicLoad builtin.
• stage1 compiler defaults to installing in the build directory
• ability to use async function pointers
• Revise self-hosted command line interface
• Add exp/norm distributed random float generation. -Marc Tiehuis
• On linux, clock_gettime uses the VDSO optimization, even for static builds.
• Better error reporting for missing libc on Windows. (#931)
• Improved fmt float-printing. -Marc Tiehuis
  • Fix errors printing very small numbers
  • Add explicit scientific output mode
  • Add rounding based on a specific precision for both decimal/exp modes.
  • Test and confirm exp/decimal against libc for all f32 values. Various changes to better match libc.
• The crypto throughput test now uses the new std.os.time module. -Marc Tiehuis
• Added better support for unpure enums in tranlate C. -Jimmi Holst Christensen (#975)
• Made container methods that can be const, const. -Jimmi Holst Christensen
• Tagged union field access prioritizes members over enum tags. (#959)
• std.fmt.format supports {B} for human readable bytes using SI prefixes.
• Zig now knows the C integer sizes for OpenBSD. Thanks to Jan Schreib for this information. (#1016)
• Renamed integer literal type and float literal type to comptime_int and comptime_float. -Jimmi Holst Christensen
• @canImplicitCast is removed. Nobody will miss it.
• Allow access of array.len through a pointer. -Jimmi Holst Christensen
• Optional pointers follow const-casting rules. Any *T -> ?*T cast is allowed implicitly, even when it occurs deep inside the type, and the cast is a no-op at runtime.
• Add i128 compiler-rt div/mul support. -Marc Tiehuis
• Add target C int type information for msp430 target. #1125
• Add __extenddftf2 and __extendsftf2 to zig’s compiler-rt.
• Add support for zig to compare comptime array values. -Jimmi Holst Christensen (#1167)
• Support --emit in test command. -Ben Noordhuis (#1175)
• Operators now throw a compiler error when operating on undefined values. -Jimmi Holst Christensen (#1185)
• Always link against compiler_rt even when linking libc. Sometimes libgcc is missing things we need, so we always link compiler_rt and rely on weak linkage to allow libgcc to override.
• Add compile error notes for where struct definitions are. (#1202)
• Add @popCount.
• Cleaner output from zig build when there are compile errors.
• new builder.addBuildOption API. -Josh Wolfe
• Add compile error for disallowed types in extern structs. (#1218)
• build system: add -Dskip-release option to test faster. -Andrew Kelley & Jimmi Holst Christensen
• allow == for comparing optional pointers. #658
• allow implicit cast of undefined to optional
• switch most windows calls to use W versions instead of A. (#534)
• Better anonymous struct naming. This makes anonymous structs inherit the name of the function they are in only when they are the return expression. Also document the behavior and provide examples. (#1243)
• compile error for @noInlineCall on an inline fn (#1133)
• stage1: use os_path_resolve instead of os_path_real to canonicalize imports. This means that softlinks can represent different files, but referencing the same absolute path different ways still references the same import.
• rename --enable-timing-info to -ftime-report to match clang, and have it print llvm’s internal timing info.
• Binary releases now include the LICENSE file.
• Overhaul standard library api for getting random integers. -Josh Wolfe (#1578)

Bug Fixes

• fix incorrect compile error on inferred error set from async function #856
• fix promise->T syntax not parsed #857
• fix crash when compile error in analyzing @panic call
• fix compile time array concatenation for slices #866
• fix off-by-one error in all standard library crypto functions. -Marc Tiehuis
• fix use-after-free in BufMap.set() – Ben Noordhuis #879
• fix llvm assert on version string with git sha -Ben Noordhuis #898
• codegen: fix not putting llvm allocas together
• fix calling convention at callsite of zig-generated fns
• inline functions now must be stored in const or comptime var. #913
• fix linux implementation of self exe path #894
• Fixed looking for windows sdk when targeting linux. -Jimmi Holst Christensen
• Fixed incorrect exit code when build.zig cannot be created. -Ben Noordhuis
• Fix os.File.mode function. -Marc Tiehuis
• Fix OpqaueType usage in exported c functions. -Marc Tiehuis
• Added memmove to builtin.o. LLVM occasionally generates a dependency on this function.
• Fix std.BufMap logic. -Ben Noordhuis
• Fix undefined behavior triggered by fn inline test
• Build system supports LLVM_LIBDIRS and CLANG_LIBDIRS. -Ben Noordhuis
• The Zig compiler does exit(1) instead of abort() for file not found.
• Add compile error for invalid deref on switch target. (#945)
• Fix printing floats in release mode. -Marc Tiehuis (#564, #669, #928)
• Fix @shlWithOverflow producing incorrect results when used at comptime (#948)
• Fix labeled break causing defer in same block to fail compiling (#830)
• Fix compiler crash with functions with empty error sets. -Jimmi Holst Christensen (#762, #818)
• Fix returning literals from functions with inferred error sets. -Jimmi Holst Christensen (#852)
• Fix compiler crash for .ReturnType and @ArgType on unresolved types. -Jimmi Holst Christensen (#846)
• Fix compiler-rt ABI for x86_64 windows
• Fix extern enums having the wrong size. -Jimmi Holst Christensen (#970)
• Fix bigint multi-limb shift and masks. -Marc Tiehuis
• Fix bigint shift-right partial shift. -Marc Tiehuis
• translate-c: fix typedef duplicate definition of variable. (#998)
• fix comptime code modification of global const. (#1008)
• build: add flag to LLD to fix gcc 8 build. (#1013)
• fix AtomicFile for relative paths. (#1017)
• fix compiler assert when trying to unwrap return type type. -Jimmi Holst Christensen
• fix crash when evaluating return type has compile error. (#1058)
• Fix Log2Int type construction. -Marc Tiehuis
• fix std.os.windows.PathFileExists specified in the wrong DLL (#1066)
• Fix structs that contain types which require comptime. (#586)

  Now, if a struct has any fields which require comptime, such as type, then the struct is marked as requiring comptime as well. Same goes for unions.

  This means that a function will implicitly be called at comptime if the return type is a struct which contains a field of type type.

• fix assertion failure when debug printing comptime values
• fix @tagName handling specified enum values incorrectly. (#976, #1080)
• fix ability to call mutating methods on zero size structs. (#838)
• disallow implicit casts that break rules for optionals. (#1102)
• Fix windows x86_64 i128 ABI issue. -Marc Tiehuis
• Disallow opaque as a return type of function type syntax. (#1115)
• Fix compiler crash for invalid enums. (#1079, #1147)
• Fix crash for optional pointer to empty struct. (#1153)
• Fix comptime @tagName crashing sometimes. (#1118)
• Fix coroutine accessing freed memory. (#1164)
• Fix runtime libc detection on linux depending on locale. (#1165)
• Fix await on early return when return type is struct.
• Fix iterating over a void slice. (#1203)
• Fix crash on @ptrToInt of a *void (#1192)
• fix crash when calling comptime-known undefined function ptr. #880, #1212
• fix @setEvalBranchQuota not respected in generic fn calls. #1257
• Allow pointers to anything in extern/exported declarations (#1258) -Jimmi Holst Christensen
• Prevent non-export symbols from clobbering builtins. (#1263)
• fix generation of error defers for fns inside fns. (#878)
• Fixed windows getPos. -Jimmi Holst Christensen
• fix logic for determining whether param requires comptime (#778, #1213)
• Fixed bug in LLD crashing when linking twice in the same process. (#1289)
• fix assertion failure when some compile errors happen
• add compile error for non-inline for loop on comptime type
• add compile error for missing parameter name of generic function
• add compile error for ignoring return value of while loop bodies (#1049)
• fix tagged union initialization with a runtime void (#1328)
• translate-c: fix for loops and do while loops with empty body
• fix incorrectly generating an unused const fn global (#1277)
• Fix builtin alignment type. -Marc Tiehuis (#1235)
• fix handling multiple extern vars with the same name
• fix llvm assertion failure when building std lib tests for macos (#1417)
• fix false negative determining if function is generic
• fix @typeInfo unable to distinguish compile error vs no-payload (#1421, #1426)
• fix crash when var in inline loop has different types (#917, #845, #741, #740)
• add compile error for function prototype with no body (#1231)
• fix invalid switch expression parameter. (#604)
• Translate-c: Check for error before working on while loop body. -Jimmi Holst Christensen (#1445)
• use the sret attribute at the callsite when appropriate. Thanks to Shawn Landden for the original pull request. (#1450)
• ability to @ptrCast to *void. (#960)
• compile error instead of segfault for unimplemented feature. (#1103)
• fix incorrect value for inline loop. (#1436)
• compile errors instead of crashing for unimplemented minValue/maxValue builtins
• add compile error for comptime control flow inside runtime block (#834)
• update throughput test to new File API (#1468)
• fix compile error on gcc 7.3.0. Only set -Werror for debug builds, and only for zig itself, not for embedded LLD. (#1474)
• stage1: fix emit asm with explicit output file (#1473)
• stage1: fix crash when invalid type used in array type (#1186)
• stage1 compile error instead of crashing for unsupported comptime ptr cast (#955)
• stage1: fix tagged union with no payloads (#1478)
• Add compile error for using outer scoped runtime variables from a fn defined inside it. (#876)
• stage1: improve handling of generic fn proto type expr. (#902)
• stage1: compile error instead of incorrect code for unimplemented C ABI. (#1411, #1481)
• add support for partial C ABI compatibility on x86_64. (#1411, #1264)
• fix crash when var init has compile error and then the var is referenced (#1483)
• fix incorrect union const value generation (#1381)
• fix incorrect error union const value generation (#1442)
• fix tagged union with only 1 field tripping assertion (#1495)
• add compile error for merging non- error sets (#1509)
• fix assertion failure on compile-time @intToPtr of function
• fix tagged union with all void payloads but meaningful tag (#1322)
• fix alignment of structs. (#1248, #1052, #1154)
• fix crash when pointer casting a runtime extern function
• allow extern structs to have stdcallcc function pointers (#1536)
• add compile error for non-optional types compared against null (#1539)
• add compile error for @ptrCast 0 bit type to non-0 bit type
• fix codegen for @intCast to u0
• fix @bytesToSlice on a packed struct (#1551)
• fix implicit cast of packed struct field to const ptr (#966)
• implementation for bitcasting extern enum type to c_int (#1036)
• add compile error for slice.*.len (#1372)
• fix optional pointer to empty struct incorrectly being non-null (#1178)
• better string literal caching implementation

  We were caching the ConstExprValue of string literals, which works if you can never modify ConstExprValues. This premise is broken with `comptime var …`.

  So I implemented an optimization in ConstExprValue arrays, where it stores a Buf * directly rather than an array of ConstExprValues for the elements, and then similar to array of undefined, it is expanded into the canonical form when necessary. However many operations can happen directly on the Buf *, which is faster.

  Furthermore, before a ConstExprValue array is expanded into canonical form, it removes itself from the string literal cache. This fixes the issue, because before an array element is modified it would have to be expanded.

  See #1076

• add compile error for casting const array to mutable slice (#1565)
• fix std.fmt.formatInt to handle upcasting to base int size
• fix comptime slice of pointer to array (#1565)
• fix comptime string concatenation ignoring slice bounds (#1362)
• stage1: unify 2 implementations of pointer deref. I found out there were accidentally two code paths in zig ir for pointer dereference. So this should fix a few bugs. (#1486)
• add compile error for slice of undefined slice (#1293)
• fix @compileLog having unintended side effects. (#1459)
• fix translate-c incorrectly translating negative enum init values (#1360)
• fix comptime bitwise operations with negative values (#1387, #1529)
• fix self reference through fn ptr field crash (#1208)
• fix crash on runtime index into slice of comptime type (#1435)
• fix implicit casting to *c_void (#1588)
• fix variables which are pointers to packed struct fields (#1121)
• fix crash when compile error evaluating return type of inferred error set. (#1591)
• fix zig-generated DLLs not properly exporting functions. (#1443)

This Release Contains Bugs

Zig has known bugs.

The first release that will ship with no known bugs will be 1.0.0.

Roadmap

• Redo coroutines without using LLVM Coroutines and rework the semantics. See #1363 and #1194.
• Tuples instead of var args. #208
• Well-defined copy-eliding semantics. #287
• Self-hosted compiler. #89
• Get to 100% documentation coverage of the language
• Auto generated documentation. #21
• Package manager. #943

Active External Projects Using Zig

• pokemon-randomizer – Pokémon Rom randomizer tool
• oxid – arcade-style game where you fight waves of monsters in a fixed-screen maze
• zig-rosetta – Rosettacode examples in zig
• zig-vulkan-triangle – simple triangle displayed using vulkan, glfw, and zig

Thank you financial supporters!

Special thanks to those who donate monthly. We’re now at $1,349 of the $3,000 goal. I hope this release helps to show how much time I’ve been able to dedicate to the project thanks to your support.

• Lauren Chavis
• Raph Levien
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Thank you Andrea Orru for sending me a giant box of Turkish Delight