Bootstrapping Zig with no binary blobs: status update and call for packages.

Bootstrapping Zig with no binary blobs: status update and call for packages.

[Hilton Chain]

Hello Guix!

After working on 'wip-zig-bootstrap' branch for the past month[1], I'm glad to
say it's ready for testing now!

+ Zig is bootstrapped to the current release, 0.13.0!

Greatly thanks to Motiejus!  I cannot find out the way without them finishing
the trickiest part.  They have also published a blog post[2].

You can now use Zig 0.13.0 and everything on wip-zig-bootstrap via
‘guix time-machine’, for example:
--8<---------------cut here---------------start------------->8---
guix time-machine \
        --no-channel-files \
        --branch=wip-zig-bootstrap \
        -- shell zig@0.13
--8<---------------cut here---------------end--------------->8---

Building 0.13 from the beginning of bootstrap chain takes around 5 hours on my
machine.  Efraim is building the branch on berlin so there should be some
substitutes on ci.guix.gnu.org, at least for sources.

Patches for adjusting linking behavior have been applied to all release versions
we currently have (0.9.1, 0.10.1, 0.11.0, 0.12.1, 0.13.0).  They should work
just fine without any extra workaround, please report to [1] if you encounter
any issue.

+ Cross build and Zig package manager support are available in zig-build-system.

zig-build-system now by default installs source under "/src" of package output.
Like in go-build-system, this can be disabled by setting #:install-source? to #f.

Other new arguments, #:skip-build? and #:zig-inputs, like the ones in
cargo-build-system, are available.  Note that packages and sources in
#:zig-inputs must have their output names starting with "zig-".

Example packages are available in (gnu packages zig-xyz) on wip-zig-bootstrap[3].

These new features need testing, please send your favorite packages to
guix-patches@gnu.org, targeting wip-zig-bootstrap and prefixed with "zig-team",
the more the better :)


Cheers,
Hilton
---
[1]: Bootstrapping Zig with no Binary Blobs
     https://issues.guix.gnu.org/74217

[2]: Zig Reproduced Without Binaries
     https://jakstys.lt/2024/zig-reproduced-without-binaries/

[3]: https://git.savannah.gnu.org/cgit/guix.git/tree/gnu/packages/zig-xyz.scm?h=wip-zig-bootstrap

Re: Bootstrapping Zig with no binary blobs: status update and call for packages.

[Ashvith Shetty]

Hi Hilton,

There's a lot of builds happening (perhaps related to the Zig 
sub-versions) when I try to build Zig 0.13 locally to test building a 
package of my choice. Is there a way to navigate this blocker?

Regards,
Ashvith

Re: Bootstrapping Zig with no binary blobs: status update and call for packages.

[Hilton Chain]

Hi Ashvith,

On Mon, 02 Dec 2024 04:39:09 +0800,
Ashvith Shetty wrote:
>
> There's a lot of builds happening (perhaps related to the Zig sub-versions)
> when I try to build Zig 0.13 locally to test building a package of my
> choice. Is there a way to navigate this blocker?

I'm building them on my server so there're substitutes on [1], I didn't mention
it before because it requires extra authorization.

Thanks
---
[1]: https://substitute.boiledscript.com