zig-dev

Zig Development

Baala's primary language as of 2026-02-03. "Zig matches how I think about computation."

Why Zig Won

From the nufast benchmark session:

• 2.4× faster than Rust for vacuum oscillations
• 1.8× faster than C++ for matter calculations
• comptime + explicit allocators = pure compute speed
• WASM SIMD128 works out of the box with @Vector

Quick Reference

Build Commands

# Debug build
zig build

# Release (optimized)
zig build -Doptimize=ReleaseFast

# Release with safety checks
zig build -Doptimize=ReleaseSafe

# Small binary (for WASM)
zig build -Doptimize=ReleaseSmall

# Run tests
zig build test

# Run specific test
zig build test -- "test name pattern"

# Generate docs
zig build docs

# Cross-compile
zig build -Dtarget=x86_64-linux-gnu
zig build -Dtarget=aarch64-macos
zig build -Dtarget=x86_64-windows-gnu

Project Structure

project/
├── build.zig              # Build configuration
├── build.zig.zon          # Dependencies
├── src/
│   └── main.zig           # Entry point
├── tests/
│   └── test_main.zig      # Tests
└── zig-cache/             # Build cache

Common Patterns

Error Handling

const std = @import("std");

pub fn main() !void {
    const allocator = std.heap.page_allocator;

    // Try to allocate
    const data = try allocator.alloc(u8, 1024);
    defer allocator.free(data);

    // Or handle error
    const result = someOperation() catch |err| {
        std.log.err("Operation failed: {}", .{err});
        return err;
    };
}

Comptime

// Comptime-known values
const SIZE = 1024;

// Comptime functions
fn factorial(comptime n: u32) u32 {
    if (n == 0) return 1;
    return n * factorial(n - 1);
}

// Comptime blocks
comptime {
    std.debug.assert(factorial(5) == 120);
}

Generics

fn Stack(comptime T: type) type {
    return struct {
        items: std.ArrayList(T),

        pub fn init(allocator: std.mem.Allocator) @This() {
            return .{
                .items = std.ArrayList(T).init(allocator),
            };
        }
    };
}

Triggers

command: /zig-build command: /zig-test command: /zig-docs command: /zig-clean pattern: zig build pattern: zig test

Configuration

zig_path (string): Path to zig executable (default: zig) optimize_mode (string): Default optimize mode (default: ReleaseFast) target_triple (string): Default target triple (default: native) enable_wasm (boolean): Enable WASM support (default: true)

Usage

Build project

/zig-build

Run tests

/zig-test

Generate documentation

/zig-docs

Clean build artifacts

/zig-clean

Implementation Notes

This skill provides Zig development workflow support. It:

1. Manages Zig build configurations
2. Runs tests and benchmarks
3. Generates documentation
4. Handles cross-compilation
5. Supports WASM builds

Dependencies

• Zig compiler (0.16.0+)