Would you consider building with Zig?

[inge4pres]

Motivation

Zig has an interesting approach to building software, is interoperable with C and C++.
Despite not being stabilized yet, it shows great capabilities in multiple areas where precise control of resources is desirable.

Adding a build.zig and a build.zig.zon file to this repo would allow all users to build (and test, maybe) this project with the zig binary.
It would automatically allow the project to be packaged as a Zig dependency that other projects can use in their build scripts.

Implementation Plan

The zig build artifacts can co-exist with the CMake/bazel build currently in place.
What we would do:

• Add the build files in the repo root
• (optional) Create a build directory if the build script gets too hairy
• Add a GitHub workflow that builds the project with the latest released version of Zig

[gchatelet]

I don't know Zig myself but I'm not opposed to its addition to cpu_features as long as it's not too big. Also I can't commit to supporting it so that would be a community effort.
Would you mind creating a PR so I get a feel of it (doesn't need to be complete).

Side note, I'm not too fond of a build folder because CMake users usually create their project here so its likely to conflict.

[Mizux]

+1 for not using build dir, since we already have a bazel/ and cmake/ top dir, would it be possible to have a zig/ top dir instead ?

[inge4pres]

Thanks for your inputs 🙏🏼

Also I can't commit to supporting it so that would be a community effort.

I'd be happy to contribute this change myself, and maintain it if needed.
Zig releases happen on a semester/quarter basis so when those land, maintainers should update the Github action and the build.zig file accordingly.

I can create a draft PR to discuss.

+1 for not using build dir, since we already have a bazel/ and cmake/ top dir, would it be possible to have a zig/ top dir instead ?

Deal, although it's not going to be necessary to have an additional folder at all, only if the build script becomes too complex to have in just 1 file.
Let's say we can start with just 2 files, and if necessary, a top-level zig folder will contain the zig build harness.

[inge4pres]

Linked PR provides ability to build with Zig 0.15.1.

[inge4pres]

@Mizux @gchatelet thanks for the reviews 🙏🏼 the PR requires a new approval as I had pushed one more commit to address a comment after approval.

[inge4pres]

Completed with #431, opened #433 and #434 as follow ups