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make "gnu" (mingw-w64) the default C ABI on Windows #6565

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andrewrk opened this issue Oct 5, 2020 · 5 comments · Fixed by #8878
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make "gnu" (mingw-w64) the default C ABI on Windows #6565

andrewrk opened this issue Oct 5, 2020 · 5 comments · Fixed by #8878
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accepted This proposal is planned. os-windows proposal This issue suggests modifications. If it also has the "accepted" label then it is planned.
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0.8.0

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@andrewrk
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andrewrk commented Oct 5, 2020

Currently if you download Zig on Windows, and then try to build some C code, without MSVC installed, you get an error saying that Zig cannot find or provide a libc. This is a shame because we actually can provide a libc! The magic sauce is -target native-native-gnu which uses mingw-w64 to provide libc.

This proposal is to make -gnu the default on windows rather than -msvc. This C ABI is binary-compatible with MSVC-compiled code, however the header files are not source-compatible with MSVC libc header files. When zig is responsible for compiling all of the C, C++, and Zig code for a given project, then there is 0 downsides to using mingw-w64 as the C ABI. The upsides are huge: no dependency on MSVC being installed. Zig acts as a C and C++ compiler that works out of the box, without MSVC installed.

I discussed this with @mlarouche on IRC and he indicated that it may sometimes be useful to specify -target native-native-msvc but that it does make sense to make the default mingw-w64.

Some more tid bits:

  • the plan is to make it .obj instead of .o always for coff, and to always use .lib (not .a) for libraries, ignoring gnu conventions
  • libc_installation.zig: make it look for msvc only if msvc abi is chosen

Related: #6363
@andrewrk andrewrk added proposal This issue suggests modifications. If it also has the "accepted" label then it is planned. accepted This proposal is planned. os-windows labels Oct 5, 2020
@andrewrk andrewrk added this to the 0.7.0 milestone Oct 5, 2020
andrewrk referenced this issue Oct 5, 2020
@andrewrk
build system: implement computeOutFilenames using std.zig.binNameAlloc
33bc1eb 
See #6552 #6553 #6483

Also fixes a regression introduced in
1d777e9 of not converting an integer to
a string for a command line parameter.
@codehz
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codehz commented Oct 5, 2020 •
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btw, will it support specify exact output filename(including extension but not whole path) in install step?

@andrewrk
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andrewrk commented Oct 5, 2020

Good question. Related: #6325

@andrewrk andrewrk mentioned this issue Oct 13, 2020
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@andrewrk andrewrk modified the milestones: 0.7.0, 0.8.0 Nov 6, 2020
@andrewrk andrewrk mentioned this issue Dec 11, 2020
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@andrewrk andrewrk modified the milestones: 0.8.0, 0.9.0 May 19, 2021
andrewrk added a commit that referenced this issue May 23, 2021
@andrewrk
make "gnu" (mingw-w64) the default C ABI on Windows
8e86da7 
Closes #6565
@andrewrk andrewrk mentioned this issue May 23, 2021
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andrewrk added a commit that referenced this issue May 23, 2021
@andrewrk
make "gnu" (mingw-w64) the default C ABI on Windows
000004b 
Closes #6565
andrewrk added a commit that referenced this issue May 24, 2021
@andrewrk
make "gnu" (mingw-w64) the default C ABI on Windows
6092078 
Closes #6565
@RoyiAvital
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Zig's 0.8 Release Notes says:

Note that mingw-w64 is ABI-compatible with MSVC, so any build artifacts produced by one are consumable by the other. However the respective C header files are not always API-compatible, which is why there is still a use case for overriding the default.

As far as I know, you can't use / it might cause issues to use Static Libraries generated with MinGW64 in MSVC and vice versa.

@andrewrk
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andrewrk commented Jun 5, 2021

As far as I know, you can't use / it might cause issues to use Static Libraries generated with MinGW64 in MSVC and vice versa.

Can you cite your source?

@RoyiAvital
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Maybe you can look at https://github.com/jmeubank/tdm-distrib/blob/master/tdm64/core/README-gcc-tdm64.md

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make "gnu" (mingw-w64) the default C ABI on Windows ziglang/zig
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