Using vaxis with zig nightly builds?

[nurpax]

Hi,

I normally develop with Zig nightly builds. I wanted to try Vaxis but noticed that main is for zig 0.13. OTOH, the vaxis zig-0.14.0 doesn't seem to build either due to errors like this:

C:Users\janne\AppData\Local\zig\p\1220dd654ef941fc76fd96f9ec6adadf83f69b9887a0d3f4ee5ac0a1a3e11be35cf5\src\ImageUnmanaged.zig:96:35: error: no field named 'Struct' in enum '@typeInfo(builtin.Type).@"union".tag_type.?'
            if (entryTypeInfo == .Struct) {
                                 ~^~~~~~
C:\Users\janne\scoop\apps\zig-dev\0.14.0-dev.2384\lib\std\builtin.zig:556:18: note: enum declared here
pub const Type = union(enum) {
                 ^~~~~

I guess Vaxis's "zig 0.14" was coded against some older Zig version than what I have? I think the .Struct -> .struct was done a while ago.

I'm not sure how Zig projects generally handle these Zig versions. Some projects tend to track "latest Zig I've used" in main and then branch off for Zig releases.

[rockorager]

Which zig nightly are you on? I am currently using 0.14.0-dev.2456+a68119f8f on that branch and don't see this issue.

[rockorager]

Oh that would be helpful! I updated zigimg, so that one should compile, though I don't think it will work on Windows because of ConPTY.

The segfault: I'm guessing this happens because you don't have fd installed, so we get an error. The app tries to deinit, but it has an undefined buffer. Could you apply this diff, and see if you get a proper error with it?

diff --git a/examples/fuzzy.zig b/examples/fuzzy.zig
index 21d34ee30dfa..9089a29fd75e 100644
--- a/examples/fuzzy.zig
+++ b/examples/fuzzy.zig
@@ -174,7 +174,10 @@ pub fn main() !void {
     const allocator = gpa.allocator();
 
     var app = try vxfw.App.init(allocator);
-    errdefer app.deinit();
+    errdefer |err| {
+        std.log.err("error: {}", .{err});
+        app.deinit();
+    }
 
     const model = try allocator.create(Model);
     defer allocator.destroy(model);
diff --git a/src/Screen.zig b/src/Screen.zig
index ed2f3e1b70cd..ee7a780ffb6a 100644
--- a/src/Screen.zig
+++ b/src/Screen.zig
@@ -16,7 +16,7 @@ height: u16 = 0,
 width_pix: u16 = 0,
 height_pix: u16 = 0,
 
-buf: []Cell = undefined,
+buf: []Cell = &.{},
 
 cursor_row: u16 = 0,
 cursor_col: u16 = 0,

[nurpax]

In fact I do have fd installed.

I can see what the problem is:

    try app.run(model.widget(), .{});
    app.deinit();

    if (model.result.len > 0) {
        const writer = std.io.getStdOut().writer();
        try writer.print("{s}\n", .{model.result});

If the writer.print fails with an error, app is deinited twice because an app.deinit() was registered with errdefer after creating app. Writing to stdout normally does work, even on Windows, but maybe it's the piping business before that messes it up somehow?

Had a better time building the samples now! Thanks for fixing things!

PS. If you know of any terminal emulators for Windows that'd support images, let me know. :)

[rockorager]

Ah good catch. Does it segfault if you move the deinit to after the write?

Windows Terminal supports sixels now, however libvaxis does not :)

[nurpax]

Yep, moving deinit after the write works. The code with the errdefers is a little confusing but I guess it is what it is.

[rockorager]

All the examples should work in the zig-0.14.0 branch now

[rockorager]

I'm not sure how Zig projects generally handle these Zig versions. Some projects tend to track "latest Zig I've used" in main and then branch off for Zig releases.

I've seen three approaches:

1. Always track zig master
2. main/master tracks zig master, and tag releases for zig versions
3. main/master tracks last zig tag. Update to zig-next after release

Personally, I prefer option 3. It means that I can add features or fix bugs to the library without forcing users to update zig as well. It's been working pretty well to have a longish running zig-{next} branch and rebasing on main periodically.