Development workflow

The build entry point is build.zig

Everything starts at build.zig. The build(b: *std.Build) function:

• Defines the compiler executable (driven by src/main.zig).
• Generates lib/docs/ (autodoc) and doc/langref.html.
• Constructs every test-* step (the tests import maps to test/tests.zig).
• Exposes the user-facing options: -Donly-c, -Dno-bin, -Dskip-install-lib-files, -Dno-langref, -Dstd-docs, -Dflat, -Dsingle-threaded, -Duse-zig-libcxx, -Denable-superhtml.

build.zig.zon declares two local-path dependencies, both pointing into the test tree (test/standalone and test/link), so the build graph treats those test suites as packages.

Iteration loop

# Build the compiler in Debug.
zig build

# Build with the C backend (portable, slow). Used for bootstrapping.
zig build -Donly-c

# Skip copying lib/ files; speeds up edits in src/ when you don't need them.
zig build -Dskip-install-lib-files

# Build only the language reference / autodoc.
zig build langref
zig build std-docs

The output binary lands in zig-out/bin/zig (or whatever --prefix targets). Run that directly for any quick test:

./zig-out/bin/zig build-exe path/to/test.zig
./zig-out/bin/zig test path/to/test.zig
./zig-out/bin/zig fmt path/to/test.zig

Branching and review

There is no CONTRIBUTING.md or CODEOWNERS checked in. The conventions visible in git log are:

• Linear, fast-forward history for the master branch (no merge commits).
• Commit messages tend to be short and imperative ("Sema: fix X", "x86_64: handle Y").
• Reviews happen on the upstream forge (currently Codeberg per the README pointer).

CI parity

Before sending a change, run the same script CI would:

sh ci/x86_64-linux-debug.sh

Each script is small and self-contained; reading ci/<target>-<mode>.sh shows exactly what flags are passed and which test step is gated on that platform. PowerShell equivalents (ci/*.ps1) exist for Windows targets.

Issue templates

.forgejo/ISSUE_TEMPLATE/ carries the templates used on the forge for new bug reports and proposals.

Avoiding common rebuilds

• Use -Dno-bin if you only want to validate that the source compiles without producing a binary.
• Use -Dskip-install-lib-files while iterating to avoid copying lib/ every build.
• Use -Dno-langref if you don't need to regenerate doc/langref.html.

Watch mode

zig build --watch (driven by lib/std/Build/Watch.zig and lib/std/Build/Fuzz.zig) re-runs only the affected steps when files change. This is the day-to-day workflow for language and stdlib edits because it dovetails with the compiler's incremental analysis (src/IncrementalDebugServer.zig, tools/incr-check.zig).