Day 1: Installation and Hello World

Welcome to Day 1 of my 1000 Days of Zig challenge! Today, I’m setting up the environment and writing my first Zig program.Truth be told this is like my month four of doing Zig, I started back in December, take this Day 1 story with caution.

Installing Zig

Zig is available on multiple platforms. The easiest way to get started is to download a pre-built binary from the Zig downloads page.

On macOS (using Homebrew):

brew install zig

On Linux:

# Download the latest master build
wget https://ziglang.org/builds/zig-linux-x86_64-<version>.tar.xz
tar xf zig-linux-x86_64-<version>.tar.xz
export PATH="$PWD/zig-linux-x86_64-<version>:$PATH"

Verify Installation:

zig version

Hello, World!

Let’s write the classic “Hello, World!” program in Zig. Create a file named hello.zig:

const std = @import("std");

pub fn main() void {
    std.debug.print("Hello, World!\n", .{});
}

Running the Program:

zig run hello.zig

Output:

Hello, World!

Understanding the Code

Let’s break down what’s happening:

1. const std = @import("std"); - Imports the Zig standard library and assigns it to the constant std
2. pub fn main() void - Declares the main function that returns nothing (void). Zig is still under heavy development just recently Zig 0.16 was released, which introduced a number of big changes, Writergate was also part of the release
3. std.debug.print() - Uses the standard library’s debug print function
4. .{} - An empty anonymous struct literal, used here as the format arguments

Using Zig’s Build System

Zig comes with a powerful build system. Let’s create a proper project:

mkdir hello_world
cd hello_world
zig init-exe

This creates a basic project structure with:

• build.zig - Build configuration
• src/main.zig - Main source file

Building the Project:

zig build

Running the Built Executable:

zig build run

Cross-Compilation

One of Zig’s killer features is easy cross-compilation. Let’s compile our hello world for Windows from macOS/Linux:

zig build-exe hello.zig -target x86_64-windows

Or for WebAssembly:

zig build-exe hello.zig -target wasm32-wasi

What I Learned Today

• Zig installation is straightforward
• The language syntax is clean and explicit
• The build system is integrated and powerful
• Cross-compilation is incredibly easy
• No hidden allocations or control flow

Looking Ahead

Tomorrow, I’ll look into Ziglings and do about 10 exercises. Stay tuned for Day 2!

References

1. Zig Official Website
2. Zig Documentation
3. Zig Learn
4. 100 days of code
5. Systems Programming with Zig
6. Ziglings