Zigler - Zig nifs for Elixir

ityonemo

Currently just starting out on a new mini-project - getting zig NIFs to run in elixir.

The idea here is to make the zig NIFs be “embedded” in the elixir code, much like an “asm” call in C. It also makes the bridge between the zig function call and the elixir “basically transparent”. Several adapters are provided: i64, f64, string (as a c string or a zig slice), i64 arrays, f64 arrays. Of course it’s not terribly hard to do the unmarshalling of the erlang terms yourself inside the NIF.

Haven’t started documenting yet, but if you want to see how it works, the test/ directory has quite a few instructive examples which are all passing as of zig 0.4.0

Comments and criticism appreciated!

56 comments

#library #nif #programminguages #zigler

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2025-08-21 11:26:57 UTC

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venkatd

We’ve been using Zigler/Zig in production and I love how seamless the experience is.

We opted for Zig over Rust for personal preferences. I think Zig is closer to C while Rust is closer to C++. We’re more C-kind of personality.

It also comes in handy when trying to integrate with 3rd party C libraries.

Post #58

zookzook

Many thanks for the great work on Zigler — it really opens up exciting new possibilities!
Up to now, I’ve been using Rustler and Rust to offload certain tasks.
Rust is powerful, but I often found it a bit tricky and more complicated than I’d like.
That’s why I recently started exploring Zig and Zigler.
As a little learning exercise, I built an IPv4 trie in Zig. It can be used in Phoenix, for example, to block or allow specific host addresses.
Here’s the link to the repo: ZigDemo

Post #56

ityonemo

https://github.com/E-xyza/zigler/issues/420

Post #55

jeremy_c

Just a FYI, when I tried the pub usingnamespace trick, I get:

** (KeyError) key :pub not found
    (zig_parser 0.1.9) lib/zig.parser.ex:272: Zig.Parser.put_opt/3
    (zig_parser 0.1.9) lib/zig.parser/top_level_decl.ex:5: Zig.Parser.TopLevelDecl.post_traverse/5
    (zig_parser 0.1.9) Zig.Parser."TopLevelDecl__22"/6
    (zig_parser 0.1.9) Zig.Parser."ContainerDeclarations__4"/6
    (zig_parser 0.1.9) Zig.Parser."ContainerMembers__0"/6
    (zig_parser 0.1.9) Zig.Parser."Root__4"/6
    (zig_parser 0.1.9) Zig.Parser.parser__1/6
    (zig_parser 0.1.9) Zig.Parser.parser/2
    (zig_parser 0.1.9) lib/zig.parser.ex:179: Zig.Parser.parse/1
    (zigler 0.10.3) lib/zig/compiler.ex:85: Zig.Compiler.compile/4
    (zigler 0.10.3) expanding macro: Zig.Compiler.__before_compile__/1

It’s OK if the feature is coming in 0.11. Thanks for giving it a shot!

Post #54

ityonemo

actually in the meantime, you can probably (haven’t tried it, kinda guessing) get the result you want by doing:

~Z"""
pub usingnamespace @import("file-to-import.zig");
"""

Post #53

ityonemo

It was an oversight that I didn’t build it in 0.10. this feature will come in 0.11

Post #52

jeremy_c

It seems that with that method, you write your code in a .zig file, but then still have to wrap every function you wish to expose to Elixir in that external .zig file within the Elixir module?

I was looking for a method that didn’t require that duplication of effort. Or did I misunderstand how it works?

Post #51

krasenyp

Very quick search in the docs tell me you can - Zig — zigler v0.16.0.

Post #50

jeremy_c

Is there a way to write the zig code in a .zig file so I can get all the goodness of an editor w/LSP, syntax highlighting, etc… for my zig code?

Post #49

ityonemo

Zigler version 0.10.1 is released, with a redone API, fully updated documentation and guides.

Big highlight is “easy_c” which lets you mount a c library (or supplied c code) and allows you to integrate C libraries as nifs in an intuitive fashion without having to write error-prone glue code by hand.

https://hexdocs.pm/zigler/6-c_integration.html

Post #48

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