Tooling

This page lists the build, lint, generation, and maintenance scripts shipped in the repository.

Build system

• build.zig (~57 KB) — the top-level build(b: *std.Build) entry. Exposes options and constructs every test-* step.
• build.zig.zon — the package manifest. Declares two local-path dependencies: test/standalone and test/link.
• cmake/, CMakeLists.txt — CMake bootstrap for stage1 (used when no zig binary exists yet).
• bootstrap.c, stage1/ — the bootstrap glue.

Format and lint

• zig fmt — built into the compiler. Runs the parser/formatter from lib/std/zig/.
• zig build test-fmt — CI gate that runs zig fmt --check over the tree.
• zig ast-check — parse-only check, useful for validating individual files quickly.

Generators

tools/ hosts code generators that update auto-generated tables. Each is a Zig program; running it requires a working zig.

Tool	Output
tools/update_cpu_features.zig (~76 KB)	Refreshes the per-target CPU feature tables consumed by lib/std/Target.zig and src/codegen/llvm.zig.
tools/update_clang_options.zig	Regenerates src/clang_options_data.zig from clang's option tables.
tools/update_glibc.zig, tools/update_mingw.zig, tools/update_freebsd_libc.zig, tools/update_netbsd_libc.zig, tools/update-linux-headers.zig, tools/process_headers.zig, tools/fetch_them_macos_headers.zig, tools/macos-headers.c, tools/gen_macos_headers_c.zig	Rebuilds the bundled libc trees under lib/libc/....
tools/generate_linux_syscalls.zig	Regenerates the syscall tables in lib/std/os/linux/.
tools/gen_outline_atomics.zig	Builds AArch64 outline atomic helpers in lib/compiler_rt/.
tools/gen_spirv_spec.zig (~31 KB)	Generates the SPIR-V spec used by src/codegen/spirv/.
tools/gen_stubs.zig	Generates dynamic library stubs (used in cross-link targets).
tools/generate_c_size_and_align_checks.zig	Builds the C size/align verification suite consumed by test/c_abi/.
tools/generate_JSONTestSuite.zig	Generates JSON test inputs for lib/std/json/.
tools/update_crc_catalog.zig (and tools/crc/)	Refreshes CRC parameter tables for lib/std/hash/.

Maintenance and harnesses

• tools/incr-check.zig (~38 KB) — incremental compilation harness. Runs an edit script against a fixture and compares against a clean rebuild.
• tools/dump-cov.zig — coverage dump utility.
• tools/migrate_langref.zig — one-off migration script for the language reference markup.

Documentation

• tools/docgen.zig (~39 KB) — builds doc/langref.html from doc/langref.html.in plus doc/langref/*.zig snippets.
• tools/doctest.zig (~66 KB) — compiles and runs each documentation snippet, checking the output matches what the docs claim.
• lib/compiler/std-docs.zig — implements zig std, the local autodoc browser.

Pretty-printers

• tools/lldb_pretty_printers.py (~58 KB)
• tools/stage1_gdb_pretty_printers.py, tools/stage2_gdb_pretty_printers.py
• tools/zig_gdb_pretty_printers.py, tools/std_gdb_pretty_printers.py

Source these from .lldbinit / .gdbinit to get readable summaries when stepping through the compiler.

CI plumbing

• .forgejo/workflows/ci.yaml — defines the runner matrix and per-target jobs.
• ci/<target>-<mode>.sh (POSIX) and ci/<target>-<mode>.ps1 (Windows) — exact build/test commands per target.
• .forgejo/ISSUE_TEMPLATE/ — issue templates.

Editor integration

zig's standard library autodoc (zig std) and lib/docs/ provide the searchable HTML docs every editor LSP can hyperlink into. zig fmt is the canonical formatter and most editor plugins call it directly.