When we release zig 1.0.0, we'll actually have the self hosted compiler built and ready to go, passing all tests. Both projects will be maintained until 2.0.0.

There are some compelling reasons to self-host:

• Makes f128 work without needing gnu extensions
• We can write the doc generator in userland
• Makes builtin overflow stuff work without C compiler extensions
• Ability to easily cross-compile the compiler

We still want the bootstrapping process to be simple though. So here's another proposal. We get a self-hosted compiler going right now. It's the official zig compiler. However the C implementation must be able to build the official zig compiler. As long as that remains true, bootstrapping is 1 step process.

Things I Want to Improve in the Self-Hosted Compiler

Performance and Caching

• Max out performance of machine with thread pool and async I/O
• Pipeline all the work. Split the job up into individual functions that each produce .o files. We'll have LLVM spitting out .o files before the last source file has been tokenized.
• No mutexes. When a coroutine needs a resource that another thread is working on, it yields to another job, getting resumed (in userspace!) when the resource is available (this looks like async/await)
• Multi-layer caching. Cache files, cache AST, cache individual functions
• Establish a file system watch on source files, detecting changes, running through the pipeline (taking caching into account), and atomically update output files in place. The compiler is a long lived process and some of the caching happens in memory.
• Handle temporary out of memory situations with emitting an event that says "waiting for more memory to be available" and it prints how much was needed along with how much the system has available

Representation of Types and Values

ConstExprValue right now has a lot of footguns built into it,
and it wastes memory. The new data layout should accomplish
these things:

• Use a minimal amount of memory
• Have at the very least runtime safety for wrong union field access
  and hopefully more compile errors when adding and removing fields.
• In Stage 1, the Type tells how to interpret the Value. In self-hosted,
  we should divorce these concepts. This should make comptime casting
  more correctly represented.
• Introduce lazy values. For example, if you do @sizeOf(error), this
  can create Value that is backed by a LazyComptimeExpr. We could still
  find out @typeOf(@sizeOf(error)) without causing the lazy expr to
  evaluate. Once we get to the end of the compilation, we start evaluating
  all the lazy expressions. If a lazy expression depends on another lazy
  expression, it gets skipped, and we make a note to start over once done.
  If all lazy expressions must be skipped, then it's a compile error, and
  we show the dependency loop.

We'll have LLVM spitting out .o files before the last source file has been tokenized.

How will this work with name resolution? You can't compile a file that depends on a file that hasn't been parsed yet.

Here's an example:

• we have 2 cores and therefore thread pool size 2
• thread 1 load,tokenize,parse main.zig, which calls foo(), bar(), baz()
• thread 1 scan top level decls and create jobs to analyze foo(), bar(), baz()
• thread 1 analyzes foo()
• thread 2 analyzes bar()
• thread 1 generates llvm code for foo()
• thread 2 generates llvm code for bar()
• thread 1 emits foo.o
• thread 2 emits bar.o
• thread 1 analyzes baz(). baz() calls @import("quux.zig")
• thread 1 load,tokenize,parse quux.zig
• etc
• main thread calls LLD linker on all the .o files

You can see from this example we would get better parallelism if we prioritized analysis of functions since that creates jobs for the pipeline - it would make thread 2 have something to do while thread 1 analyzes baz(). But this should illustrate the idea.

0.3.0 ... seemed so close 😃

Yeah. I couldn't make the deadline. 0.3.0 is two weeks away and I think those two weeks can best be spent on:

• Stack traces for windows and MacOS
• Documentation
• Bug fixes

building master always anyway 👍

Something that I would like to see with a self-hosted compiler is the ability to import the compiler as a library within my application to compile and link new code while running. For example, https://github.com/anael-seghezzi/CToy embeds tcc and provides a creative coding environment that does not require a restart when modifying code.

Is such a thing possible already when importing std.build?

Something that I would like to see with a self-hosted compiler is the ability to import the compiler as a library within my application to compile and link new code while running.

Unfortunately that's not ever going to be possible, because of the LLVM and clang dependency. Zig compiler ships with LLVM and clang libraries built into the zig compiler. And Zig supports cross compiling for many targets. To import the compiler as a library would require that LLVM and clang were available in source form (written in zig) so that they could be cross compiled for the target. To give up LLVM/clang and code our own code generator in zig would be giving up state-of-the-art optimizations and a very active community of people working on it.

However, the parts of the compiler that do not depend on LLVM and clang are available in the standard library, for example the parser and formatter. std.zig.parse and std.zig.render.

As for a coding environment that does not require a restart when modifying code, see #68.

Having LLVM/Clang written in C shouldn't prevent the compiler from being used as a library. Just like zig programs can link to and use C libraries even though they aren't in Zig.

Hello everybody,

The self-hosted compiler is now the default compiler. I have marked the 0.10.0 milestone with the due date of September 21, 2022.

Please take a look at the upgrade guide for help deciding when to upgrade and how to upgrade.

I will personally be working on the existing bug reports that are affecting third party projects, and then continue working with the projects to get them fully upgraded.

Congratulations @andrewrk! I know you and your team have been working diligently to make this happen for a long time. It's a serious milestone. Nicely done 🎉

Just witness a historical event, pure awesome

major congrats @andrewrk and team for shipping this huge milestone for Zig! ⚡ 🚢

I have a table of function pointers which stage2 tells me to change to const* (which makes sense). But I then use those function pointers with @call(.{ .modifier = .always_tail } and I get the error error: modifier 'always_tail' requires a comptime-known function. Not sure what I need to do to fix that?

See malcolmstill/zware#139

Maybe we could create a specific issue template for bug occurring due to the upgrade? I don't think it will be efficient to make this one longer.

I have a table of function pointers which stage2 tells me to change to const* (which makes sense). But I then use those function pointers with @call(.{ .modifier = .always_tail } and I get the error error: modifier 'always_tail' requires a comptime-known function. Not sure what I need to do to fix that?

See malcolmstill/foxwren#139

Yes, I agree with @kuon. You should discuss it in another issue or in any community channel. Just to give you a hint, basically you can't tail a function pointer call because you have no idea what body the function has.

By the way, congrats to the Zig team and the whole community! :)

@kuon @davidgm94 will do, thanks.