gaytabasedysfun@treehouse.systems
Oct 16, 2026, 7:20 PMi want a small language that has a good wayland library and support for threads and running programs and isn't slopped all over. is that too much to ask?
Replies
- gaytabasedysfun@treehouse.systemsOct 16, 2026, 7:20 PM
(not generally, i have a specific project in mind)
- gaytabasedysfun@treehouse.systemsOct 16, 2026, 7:26 PM
specifically, i'm looking at building an alternative installer for netbsd for desktops. it will be using wayland, so it would be beneficial to use wayland to draw the graphics as a test of if it's going to work when you've installed it. it should be small because it's the installer. it doesn't need to do anything particularly fancy, but i'm not too bothered if it pulls in a widget library, so long as it supports wayland.
Oct 16, 2026, 8:13 PMI've used zig + dvui https://github.com/david-vanderson/dvui
it worked great for me to setup, have not gotten very far yet
(linux wayland here)
- gaytabasedysfun@treehouse.systemsOct 16, 2026, 8:14 PM
@kris yeah, zig's on my shitlist at the minute https://social.treehouse.systems/@dysfun/117445730951920978
- Oct 16, 2026, 8:18 PM
ah, what system? did you use the zig-bootstrap repo/release?
i managed to bootstrap off of guix with a shell, but that was some versions ago.
- gaytabasedysfun@treehouse.systemsOct 16, 2026, 8:18 PM
@kris this was linux, using the bootstrap.c out of the repo
- Oct 16, 2026, 8:20 PM
@dysfun if you want to bootsrap with llvm, you need to use this repo:
https://github.com/ziglang/zig-bootstrap
Not very well communicated i guess, but to be fair the number of newbies that also don't want to use distro packaged or binary releases is probably quite small.
- gaytabasedysfun@treehouse.systemsOct 16, 2026, 8:23 PM
@kris right, so for using llvm, there was a cryptic comment in the README and i couldn't figure out what i was actually supposed to do, hence using the bootstrap.c
i do not have the latest version in repos but i do have an old zig so i figured i ought to be able to build it. apparently not, hence bootstrap.c.
- Oct 16, 2026, 8:44 PM
also sorry, it's codeberg now:
https://codeberg.org/ziglang/zig-bootstrapFrom there:
Build Instructions
./build <arch>-<os>-<abi> <mcpu>
This builds llvm from source as part of the build, so is quite time consuming, but it worked for me after some minor pain.
- gaytabasedysfun@treehouse.systemsOct 16, 2026, 8:45 PM
@kris building it fresh? i'm a little light on disk space right now...
- Oct 16, 2026, 8:46 PM
It's a beast yeah, future plans is to move away from linking llvm at all.
- gaytabasedysfun@treehouse.systemsOct 16, 2026, 8:47 PM
@kris of course that's going to be x86-64-linux only for the foreseeable
- Oct 16, 2026, 8:48 PM
the idea is that you can still output llvm bitcode, and pass it to clang as a process, so it should not be a downgrade in any way
Oct 16, 2026, 8:11 PM@dysfun Unfortunately yes. Most languages don't have a good wayland library and instead just bind libwayland, which depends on libffi which is slop.
A custom wayland library in your favourite language isn't hard, did it a few weeks ago for zig, but then you add the "fun" of supporting xkbcommon, font drawing, etc.. I managed a custom xkb client implementation, insanely annoying but ok, however I gave up on fonts and just use bitmap font drawing (UF format from the uxn ecosystem)...