Luke Boswell (May 29 2024 at 03:38): Luke Boswell (May 29 2024 at 03:38):Someone recently had an issue using roc-wasm4, https://github.com/lukewilliamboswell/roc-wasm4/issues/25
I was wondering if anyone would be interested in helping update the platform use a later zig version, such as 0.12.0?
It's a tiny code base, so there shouldn't be much to upgrade. I think it might be limited to the build.zig script.
Or maybe a better solution is to add a flake or similar to help people get set up on the correct version?
Kiryl Dziamura (May 29 2024 at 06:40):Ah, I started experimenting in this direction and even made some progress. But my zig knowledge (especially regarding its build system) is very limited, so it's moving very slowly
Luke Boswell (May 29 2024 at 06:42):Yeah, I haven't looked at zig 0.12.0 much yet.
Bryce Miller (May 29 2024 at 09:54):I’m game to take a look at this in the next few days unless someone else has time before I do.
Should be a good way to get more familiar with both Zig and platforms.
Bryce Miller (May 31 2024 at 01:16):I have a draft PR open: https://github.com/lukewilliamboswell/roc-wasm4/pull/26
Bryce Miller (May 31 2024 at 01:16):I feel like I've made a fair bit of progress, but I haven't fixed everything.
Luke Boswell (May 31 2024 at 01:16):Lots to change, especially in glue.
That sounds like we need to update the builtins in Roc
Luke Boswell (May 31 2024 at 01:17):Those glue files are vendored from the roc repository.
Bryce Miller (May 31 2024 at 01:17):Yes, I just checked the roc builtins and they definitely will need to change.
Bryce Miller (May 31 2024 at 01:17):Yeah, I don't understand much of how glue works but I could see that you were pulling them in from the compiler builtins.
Luke Boswell (May 31 2024 at 01:17):Hmm. I guess we could update them here, check it's all good, and then it will be easy to copy back into the repository...
Luke Boswell (May 31 2024 at 01:18):My only concern is that if there are any PR's in roc that modify builtins we might get out of sync. But I don't think there are any currently under way
Bryce Miller (May 31 2024 at 01:19):I wasn't sure whether I should change the files in this repo or not. So I'm definitely ok with waiting if you'd prefer.
Luke Boswell (May 31 2024 at 01:19):I've been thinking of cleaning up those files anyway and removing all the non-essential parts. there's a lot there that isn't needed for platform development.
Luke Boswell (May 31 2024 at 01:20):Actually the best solution would be to update the files in https://github.com/lukewilliamboswell/roc-glue-code-gen and use a glue.roc script to generate the files in the roc-wasm4 platform.
Luke Boswell (May 31 2024 at 01:20):We could maybe have two versions of the builtins in the package, both 0.11 and 0.12.
Luke Boswell (May 31 2024 at 01:21):And we could remove all the non-essential parts and simplify it for platform developers
Luke Boswell (May 31 2024 at 01:22):There's an example glue script and build script in https://github.com/lukewilliamboswell/roc-platform-template-zig/tree/main
Bryce Miller (May 31 2024 at 01:22):I'm happy to help as I have time, if it means I get to learn the mysteries of platform development. As long as you don't mind some questions.
Luke Boswell (May 31 2024 at 01:23):Awesome! :smiley: happy to answer all the questions (as best I can). Hopefully that will help others too, and might help us improve the docs for platform development
Bryce Miller (May 31 2024 at 01:25):Did somebody do something about platform development in one of the meetups sometime in the past year?
Or perhaps was it a stream Brendan did?
I seem to recall that someone did a video session related to platform development, but I've slept since then :sweat_smile:
Bryce Miller (May 31 2024 at 01:25):If that exists, I should watch it in case it answers some of my questions.
Luke Boswell (May 31 2024 at 01:26):https://drive.google.com/file/d/1LHaGTKXWhP0N5VvbjkP5k2SazElzrG0D/view?usp=sharing&t=2439
Yeah that was me. I'm not happy with my presentation -- I was very tired and it shows. But this was the talk.
Luke Boswell (May 31 2024 at 01:27):And here are the slides from my presentation 20230525-Roc-Platform-Development.pdf too
Bryce Miller (May 31 2024 at 01:27):Nice! Thanks for digging that up!
Luke Boswell (May 31 2024 at 01:27):I've been thinking I should include these somewhere more discoverable... but I'm not sure where that could live
Bryce Miller (May 31 2024 at 01:31):Ok, so next steps are updating roc-glue-code-gen for Zig 0.12, and then we should be able to generate the files for roc-wasm4. Did I understand that correctly?
Luke Boswell (May 31 2024 at 01:31):The idea behind that glue code gen package is that we can have one place for these glue files to live and then they are automatically generated by build scripts. That will make updates like this easier in future. Ofc, when we made roc-wasm4 we didn't have that, as I only just figured out how to put all this together and made those template repositories
Luke Boswell (May 31 2024 at 01:32):Yeah, it might be easiest just to update in the roc-wasm4, and then once we know its good we can copy and paste into the package and change roc-wasm4 to use a build script to generate these glue files.
Bryce Miller (May 31 2024 at 01:33):Ah, so the generated files wouldn't live in source control anymore for roc-wasm4?
Bryce Miller (May 31 2024 at 01:34):Or would you still commit them?
Luke Boswell (May 31 2024 at 01:36):I'm not 100%, but my understanding is that it is best not to commit auto generated files.
Bryce Miller (May 31 2024 at 01:37):Yeah, that's my instinct as well. Just wanted to confirm I was following. So then the build.zig in roc-wasm4 would run roc glue as part of the build, perhaps?
Luke Boswell (May 31 2024 at 01:37):I like that you can just git clone and your off and away, and theres always a script to regenerate them... but I guess it means if there are bug-fixes in the source that wont be reflected unless someone actually regenerates and commits the files
Bryce Miller (May 31 2024 at 01:38):Or perhaps there would be a way to check whether generating glue is necessary? if the glue dir is empty, run roc glue, else assume it's ok.
Luke Boswell (May 31 2024 at 01:39):In the zig platform template I currently have a build.roc which drives everything. I've kind of just settled on that as it feels nice to have all the platforms using roc as the "build" script. But it may make more sense for the zig build system to be in charge
Bryce Miller (May 31 2024 at 01:40):I don't anticipate having any complaints about writing a build script in Roc vs Zig :grinning:
Would make the experience of developing a game using roc-wasm4 more, uh, roc-y?
Bryce Miller (May 31 2024 at 01:41):Either way, sounds like there is plenty to do!
Bryce Miller (May 31 2024 at 01:44):I'm not sure whether my changes to the builtins are good, because I'm running into another error. See my comment on the PR regarding the wasm build artifact. I may end up needing help on that one, though it is possible that I'll find the answer in the documentation somewhere on my next go. I'm guessing I'll have more time tomorrow evening.
Luke Boswell (May 31 2024 at 01:45):Any assistance will be most appreciated. I try to just to a little bit here and there, and hopefully together we will be able to build something really nice over time
Bryce Miller (May 31 2024 at 01:46):Your "little bit here and there" seems to be quite a bit relative to the Roc project!
Luke Boswell (May 31 2024 at 01:46):Oh, this is the same issue I am currently stuck on with https://github.com/lukewilliamboswell/roc-platform-template-wasi
Luke Boswell (May 31 2024 at 01:47):I haven't had a chance to thoroughly investigate though. I think we could keep it as a sharedLibrary for now if that still works?
Bryce Miller (May 31 2024 at 01:48):Let me see, I think I changed it because I got an error about the target not supporting dynamic libs or something?
Bryce Miller (May 31 2024 at 01:50):Brendan left a comment there which is why I suspected that I needed to use addExecutable. But I really have no clue what I'm doing :sweat_smile:
Luke Boswell (May 31 2024 at 01:52):I'm guessing we want sharedLibrary, would need to dive into wasm4 docs. The b.addExecutable probably instructs zig to build for WASI, but I'm thinking we may not need all that for wasm4 game carts
Bryce Miller (May 31 2024 at 01:54):Ah, ok. Because the cart is just a library that W4 links when you run it?
Bryce Miller (May 31 2024 at 01:54):Or something like that?
Luke Boswell (May 31 2024 at 01:56):Yeah, the wasm4 game engine loads the .wasm file as a game cartidge
Luke Boswell (May 31 2024 at 01:58):And a .wasm file is basically a dynamic/shared library. The "exectuable" kind of wasm is basically WASI, and the zig compiler adds additional things so a runtime like wasmer, wasmtime etc will run these like normal programs with access to filesystem and other OS resources just using the zig std library.
Bryce Miller (May 31 2024 at 02:05):Ok, I think that makes sense. WASM is simply a binary instruction format. WASI allows wasm instructions to interact with the system. But in the case of W4, we don’t need to interact with the system directly. The W4 runtime takes care of all that.
Bryce Miller (May 31 2024 at 02:06):Hence, if we target WASI, the cart will be bloated with things we don’t need.
Luke Boswell (May 31 2024 at 02:07):Yeah, I think so.
Bryce Miller (May 31 2024 at 22:06):Ok, got it working with addExeutable by referencing the zig template generated by w4. This should at least allow us to validate the changes to the builtin files.
Brendan Hansknecht (Jun 01 2024 at 00:01):Ah yeah, they changed to add executable in 0.12
Brendan Hansknecht (Jun 01 2024 at 00:01):Forget why it didn't work in 0.11
Luke Boswell (Jun 01 2024 at 00:40):It seems the solution to my WASI problems and roc linking may be that we need to upgrade roc to 0.12. :grinning_face_with_smiling_eyes:
Luke Boswell (Jun 03 2024 at 01:25):Thank you @Bryce Miller - zig 12 works well :smiley:
Last updated: Jul 26 2025 at 12:14 UTC