trtl is my first foray into low level systems programming. While zig seems well suited for this, I wanted to use a library that would abstract away low level graphics, audio and input functionality. After a lot of research, I zeroed down on sdl2.
Given my lack of experience in the c ecosystem, even trivial things like linking libraries took me a while to figure out. Given Zig's C interop, I wanted to avoid using any sdl wrappers for zig and figure out how to do this myself.
I was able to setup a barebones zig program which integrates sdl2. I also deliberately avoided using the zig build file to remove that complexity. Will add one as my needs evolve.
const std = @import("std");
const sdl = @cImport({
@cInclude("SDL.h");
});
pub fn main() void{
std.debug.print("hi",.{});
_ = sdl.SDL_Init(sdl.SDL_INIT_VIDEO);
defer sdl.SDL_Quit();
const window = sdl.SDL_CreateWindow("trtl", sdl.SDL_WINDOWPOS_CENTERED, sdl.SDL_WINDOWPOS_CENTERED, 166, 166, 0);
defer sdl.SDL_DestroyWindow(window);
const surface = sdl.SDL_GetWindowSurface(window);
var quit = false;
while (!quit) {
var event: sdl.SDL_Event = undefined;
while (sdl.SDL_PollEvent(&event) != 0) {
switch (event.@"type") {
sdl.SDL_QUIT => {
quit = true;
},
else => {},
}
}
// Draw a white cross on red background
_ = sdl.SDL_FillRect(surface, 0, 0xff0000);
const v = sdl.SDL_Rect{ .x = 33, .y = 66, .w = 100, .h = 34 };
_ = sdl.SDL_FillRect(surface, &v, 0xffffff);
const h = sdl.SDL_Rect{ .x = 66, .y = 33, .w = 34, .h = 100 };
_ = sdl.SDL_FillRect(surface, &h, 0xffffff);
_ = sdl.SDL_UpdateWindowSurface(window);
}
}
zig build-exe main.zig -OReleaseSmall -fstrip $(pkg-config --libs --cflags sdl2) -lc-fstrip parameter of build-exe omits debug symbols from the output of pkg-confighttps://zserge.com/posts/zig-the-small-language/
Setting up boilerplate code for the ui, keyboard, mouse input and audio output