zig-development

Zig Development

Production patterns for Zig systems programming, covering the build system, comptime, error handling, allocators, testing, and C interop.

When to Use This Skill

• Starting or structuring a Zig project
• Working with the build.zig build system
• Using comptime for compile-time computation
• Handling errors with error unions
• Choosing and using allocators
• Writing tests in Zig
• Interfacing with C libraries

Core Concepts

1. Project Layout

myapp/
├── src/
│   ├── main.zig              # Entry point
│   ├── lib.zig               # Library root (public API)
│   ├── parser.zig
│   └── network/
│       ├── client.zig
│       └── protocol.zig
├── build.zig                 # Build configuration
├── build.zig.zon             # Package manifest (dependencies)
└── README.md

2. Key Principles

Principle	Zig Idiom
No hidden control	No hidden allocations, no operator overloading
Explicit errors	Error unions force handling at every call site
Comptime	Generics and metaprogramming via compile-time eval
Manual memory	Choose allocator per context; no GC
C interop	Direct @cImport with zero overhead

Quick Start

# Initialize a new project
zig init

# Build
zig build

# Build and run
zig build run

# Run tests
zig build test

# Run a single file
zig run src/main.zig

# Format
zig fmt src/

Patterns

Pattern 1: Build System (build.zig)

const std = @import("std");

pub fn build(b: *std.Build) void {
    const target = b.standardTargetOptions(.{});
    const optimize = b.standardOptimizeOption(.{});

    // Library
    const lib = b.addStaticLibrary(.{
        .name = "mylib",
        .root_source_file = b.path("src/lib.zig"),
        .target = target,
        .optimize = optimize,
    });

    // Link C library
    lib.linkSystemLibrary("sqlite3");
    lib.linkLibC();

    b.installArtifact(lib);

    // Executable
    const exe = b.addExecutable(.{
        .name = "myapp",
        .root_source_file = b.path("src/main.zig"),
        .target = target,
        .optimize = optimize,
    });
    exe.linkLibrary(lib);
    b.installArtifact(exe);

    // Run step
    const run_cmd = b.addRunArtifact(exe);
    run_cmd.step.dependOn(b.getInstallStep());
    if (b.args) |args| {
        run_cmd.addArgs(args);
    }

    const run_step = b.step("run", "Run the application");
    run_step.dependOn(&run_cmd.step);

    // Tests
    const lib_tests = b.addTest(.{
        .root_source_file = b.path("src/lib.zig"),
        .target = target,
        .optimize = optimize,
    });

    const run_lib_tests = b.addRunArtifact(lib_tests);

    const test_step = b.step("test", "Run unit tests");
    test_step.dependOn(&run_lib_tests.step);
}