README.md

Aro

A C compiler with the goal of providing fast compilation and low memory usage with good diagnostics.

Aro is included as an alternative C frontend in the Zig compiler for translate-c and eventually compiling C files by translating them to Zig first. Aro is developed in https://github.com/Vexu/arocc and the Zig dependency is updated from there when needed.

Currently most of standard C is supported up to C23 and as are many of the common extensions from GNU, MSVC, and Clang

Basic code generation is supported for x86-64 linux and can produce a valid hello world:

$ cat hello.c
extern int printf(const char *restrict fmt, ...);
int main(void) {
    printf("Hello, world!\n");
    return 0;
}
$ zig build && ./zig-out/bin/arocc hello.c -o hello
$ ./hello
Hello, world!

---

Using aro as a module

The following assumes that your package has a build.zig.zon file.

zig fetch --save git+https://github.com/Vexu/arocc.git

Add the following to your build.zig:

const aro = b.dependency("aro", .{
    .target = target,
    .optimize = optimize,
});

exe.root_module.addImport("aro", aro.module("aro"));

// Optional; this will make aro's builtin includes (the `include` directory of this repo) available to `Toolchain`
b.installDirectory(.{
    .source_dir = aro.path("include"),
    .install_dir = .prefix,
    .install_subdir = "include",
});

Now you can do

const aro = @import("aro");

in your Zig code.