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Building from Source

Note that you can download a binary of master branch.

Stage 1: Build Zig from C++ Source Code

Dependencies

POSIX

• cmake >= 2.8.5
• gcc >= 5.0.0 or clang >= 3.6.0
• LLVM, Clang, LLD development libraries == 10.x, compiled with the same gcc or clang version above
  • Use the system package manager, or build from source.

Windows

• cmake >= 3.15.3
• Microsoft Visual Studio. Supported versions:
  • 2015 (version 14)
  • 2017 (version 15.8)
  • 2019 (version 16)
• LLVM, Clang, LLD development libraries == 10.x
  • Use the pre-built binaries or build from source.

Instructions

POSIX

mkdir build
cd build
cmake ..
make install

MacOS

brew install cmake llvm
brew outdated llvm || brew upgrade llvm
mkdir build
cd build
cmake .. -DCMAKE_PREFIX_PATH=$(brew --prefix llvm)
make install

You will now run into this issue: homebrew and llvm 10 packages in apt.llvm.org are broken with undefined reference to getPollyPluginInfo

Please help upstream LLVM and Homebrew solve this issue, there is nothing Zig can do about it. See that issue for a workaround you can do in the meantime.

Windows

See https://github.com/ziglang/zig/wiki/Building-Zig-on-Windows

Stage 2: Build Self-Hosted Zig from Zig Source Code

Note: Stage 2 compiler is not complete. Beta users of Zig should use the Stage 1 compiler for now.

Dependencies are the same as Stage 1, except now you can use stage 1 to compile Zig code.

bin/zig build --prefix $(pwd)/stage2

This produces ./stage2/bin/zig which can be used for testing and development. Once it is feature complete, it will be used to build stage 3 - the final compiler binary.

Stage 3: Rebuild Self-Hosted Zig Using the Self-Hosted Compiler

Note: Stage 2 compiler is not yet able to build Stage 3. Building Stage 3 is not yet supported.

Once the self-hosted compiler can build itself, this will be the actual compiler binary that we will install to the system. Until then, users should use stage 1.

Debug / Development Build

./stage2/bin/zig build --prefix $(pwd)/stage3

Release / Install Build

./stage2/bin/zig build install -Drelease