Modules

The Zig build system has the concept of modules, which are other source files written in Zig. Let's make use of a module.

From a new folder, run the following commands.

zig init-exe
mkdir libs
cd libs
git clone https://github.com/Sobeston/table-helper.git

Your directory structure should be as follows.

.
├── build.zig
├── libs
│   └── table-helper
│       ├── example-test.zig
│       ├── README.md
│       ├── table-helper.zig
│       └── zig.mod
└── src
    └── main.zig

To your newly made build.zig, add the following lines.

const table_helper = b.addModule("table-helper", .{
    .root_source_file = .{ .path = "libs/table-helper/table-helper.zig" }
});
exe.root_module.addImport("table-helper", table_helper);

Now when run via zig build, @import inside your main.zig will work with the string "table-helper". This means that main has the table-helper package. Packages (type std.build.Pkg) also have a field for dependencies of type ?[]const Pkg, which is defaulted to null. This allows you to have packages which rely on other packages.

Place the following inside your main.zig and run zig build run.

const std = @import("std");
const Table = @import("table-helper").Table;

pub fn main() !void {
    try std.io.getStdOut().writer().print("{}\n", .{
        Table(&[_][]const u8{ "Version", "Date" }){
            .data = &[_][2][]const u8{
                .{ "0.7.1", "2020-12-13" },
                .{ "0.7.0", "2020-11-08" },
                .{ "0.6.0", "2020-04-13" },
                .{ "0.5.0", "2019-09-30" },
            },
        },
    });
}

This should print this table to your console.

Version Date       
------- ---------- 
0.7.1   2020-12-13 
0.7.0   2020-11-08 
0.6.0   2020-04-13 
0.5.0   2019-09-30

Zig does not yet have an official package manager. Some unofficial experimental package managers however do exist, namely zigmod. The table-helper package is designed to support it.

Some good places to find packages include: astrolabe.pm, zpm, awesome-zig, and the zig tag on GitHub.