Writing a C Compiler, in Zig (2025)

scatbot

Cool project. Feels like writing a C compiler in Zig aligns nicely with the old "maintain it in Zig" idea that was part of Zig's early value proposition. Is that still considered a relevant goal today? Longer term it also makes me wonder whether something like this could eventually reduce reliance on Clang/LLVM for the C frontend in zig's toolchain.

fuhsnn

Looking at the repo, the author seemed a little fed up [1] with the nature of lower level language and quitted. [1] https://github.com/asibahi/paella/blob/main/writeup/c19.md#u...

flossly

I thought Zig has a C compiler built in? Or is it just the Zig build system that's able to compile C, but uses an external compiler for that? Still a proper programmer-flex to build another one.

groos

I'm not sure why people seem to be under the impression that writing a compiler means that the language the compiler is implemented in should have "low level" features. A compiler is just a text -> text translation tool if you can leverage other tools such as an assembler and never needs to access machine level instructions. E.g., Pascal compilers have traditionally been written in Pascal, hardly a language which conjures up a "low level" image. Even when an assembler isn't available, all your implementation language needs to support, in terms of "low level" features, is writing of bytes to a file. But manipulating instruction and file formats and such can be tedious if your language doesn't have the right capabilities but it's not impossible.