Zig – Type Resolution Redesign and Language Changes

Zig 0.15 is pretty stable. The biggest issue I face daily are silent compiler errors (SIGBUS) for trivial things, e.g. a typo in an import path. I've yet to find exactly why this [only sometimes] causes such a crash, but they're a real pain to figure out over a large changeset. `zig ast-check` sometimes catches the error, else Claude's pretty good at spotting where I accidentally re-used a variable name (again, 90% of the time I do that, it's an easy error, but the other 10%, I get a message-less compiler crash). It sounds like the changes in the OP might be specifically addressing these types of issues.

Also, my .zig-cache is currently at 173GB, which causes some issues on the small Linux ARM VPS I test with.

As for upgrades. I upgraded lightpanda to 0.14 then 0.15 and it was fine. I think for lightpanda, the 0.16 changes might not be too bad, with the only potential issue coming from our use of libcurl and our small websocket server (for CDP connections). Those layers are relatively isolated / abstracted, so I'm hopeful.

As a library developer, I've given up following / tracking 0.16. For one, the change don't resonate with me, and for another, it's changing far too fast. I don't think anyone expects 0.16 support in a library right now. I've gotten PRs for my "dev" branches from a few brave souls and everyone seems happy with that arrangement.

I maintain a ~250K LoC Zig compiler code base [0]. We've been through several breaking Zig releases (although the code base was much smaller for most of that time; Writergate is the main one we've had to deal with since the code base crossed the 100K LoC mark).

The language and stdlib changing hasn't been a major pain point in at least a year or two. There was some upgrade a couple of years ago that took us awhile to land (I think it might have been 0.12 -> 0.13 but I could be misremembering the exact version) but it's been smooth sailing for a long time now.

These days I'd put breaking releases in the "minor nuisance" category, and when people ask what I've liked and disliked about using Zig I rarely even remember to bring it up.

[0]: https://github.com/roc-lang/roc

I stopped updating the compiler at 0.14 for three projects. Getting the correct toolchain is part of my (incremental) build process. I don't use any external Zig packages.

I think one of the more PITA changes necessary to get these projects to 0.15 is removing `usingnamespace`, which I've used to implement a kind of mixin. The projects are all a few thousand LOC and it shouldn't be that much trouble, but enough trouble that none of what I gain from upgrading currently justify doing it. I think that's fine.

For those like me who have never heard of this software: Bun, some sort of package management service for javascript. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bun_(software)

The language itself does not change much, but the std does. It depends on individuals, but some people rely less on the std, some copy the old code that they still need.

> Are there cases where packages you may use fall behind the language?

Using third party packages is quite problematic yes. I don't recommend using them too much personally, unless you want to make more work for yourself.

I recently tried to learn it and found it frustrating. A lot of docs are for 0.15 but the latest is (or was) 0.16 which changed a lot of std so none of the existing write ups were valid anymore. I plan to revisit once it gets more stable because I do like it when I get it to work.

mlugg is one of the core contributors of Zig, and is a member of the Zig foundation iirc. They've been wanting to work on dependency resolution for a while now, so I'm really glad they're cleaning this up (I've been bitten before by unclear circular dependency errors). There's not a formal language spec yet, since it's moving pretty fast, but tbh I don't see the need for a standard, since that's not one of their goals currently.

Originally, Zig's type system was less disciplined in terms of the "zero" type (also known as "noreturn").

This was proposed, discussed, and accepted here: https://github.com/ziglang/zig/issues/3257

Later, Matthew Lugg made a follow-up proposal, which was discussed both publicly and in ZSF core team meetings. https://github.com/ziglang/zig/issues/15909

He writes:

> A (fairly uncontroversial) subset of this behavior was implemented in [the changeset we are discussing]. I'll close this for now, though I'll probably end up revisiting these semantics more precisely at some point, in which case I'll open a new issue on Codeberg.

I don't know how evident this is to the casual HN reader, but to me this changeset very obviously moves Zig the language from experimental territory a large degree towards being formally specified, because it makes type resolution a Directed Acyclic Graph. Just look at how many bugs it resolved to get a feel for it. This changeset alone will make the next release of the compiler significantly more robust.

Now, I like talking about its design and development, but all that being said, Zig project does not aim for full transparency. It says right there in the README:

> Zig is Free and Open Source Software. We welcome bug reports and patches from everyone. However, keep in mind that Zig governance is BDFN (Benevolent Dictator For Now) which means that Andrew Kelley has final say on the design and implementation of everything.

It's up to you to decide whether the language and project are in trustworthy hands. I can tell you this much: we (the dev team) have a strong vision and we care deeply about the project, both to fulfill our own dreams as well as those of our esteemed users whom we serve[1]. Furthermore, as a 501(c)(3) non-profit we have no motive to enshittify.

[1]: https://ziglang.org/documentation/master/#Zen

It's been incredible working with Matthew. I hope I can have the pleasure to continue to call him my colleague for many years to come.

Just thinking out loud here, perhaps behavior like this has been more normalized because of the total shitshow that C is. Which followed all these supposedly correct rules.

> I don’t know Zig’s particular strategy and terminology for language and compiler development

Indeed you don't ... perhaps you should have asked.

> I would assume

Generally a bad idea.

> which could have previously happened, IDK

Indeed you don't. Perhaps you should have asked.

Check the response from the language BDFN, Andrew Kelley.