ziglang/zig
5 articles
Prerequisites
- ›Basic Zig language knowledge (comptime, @import, error unions, packed structs)
- ›General familiarity with compiler concepts (lexing, parsing, IRs, code generation)
01
Architecture of the Zig Compiler: A Map for the Codebase
A high-level tour of the Zig compiler's architecture, directory structure, and compilation pipeline — introducing the core structs, IR chain, and bootstrap process.
02
From Source Code to ZIR: The Zig Compiler Frontend
Deep dive into the tokenizer, recursive-descent parser, and AstGen phase that transform Zig source into ZIR — the untyped intermediate representation.
03
Semantic Analysis and the InternPool: The Heart of the Compiler
Explores Sema.zig — the compiler's largest file — which transforms ZIR into typed AIR, and the InternPool that stores all types and values as u32 indices.
04
Code Generation and Linking: From AIR to Binary
How AIR is lowered through backend-specific MIR to machine code, and how the self-hosted linkers assemble the final binary.
05
Compilation Orchestration, Caching, and Incremental Compilation
The Compilation.update() loop, three cache modes, InternPool dependency tracking, the PerThread threading model, and the multi-stage bootstrap.