Zig Runtime

This guide walks through using Zig with poly-bench, from init through run. It covers what gets created, how dependencies work, and common gotchas.

Prerequisites

You need Zig installed and available on your PATH. The table below summarizes the requirements.

Install from ziglang.org. If Zig is missing when you run init, poly-bench can offer to install it interactively during poly-bench init.

Init

When you run poly-bench init --languages zig (or select Zig in the interactive flow), poly-bench creates a Zig project under .polybench/runtime-env/zig/:

1.polybench/runtime-env/zig/
2├── build.zig
3├── build.zig.zon
4└── src/
5  └── main.zig

Modern Zig expects the build.zig.zon format to use .name = .pkg_name (enum literal). poly-bench normalizes legacy .name = "pkg" syntax for compatibility.

Add Dependencies

To add Zig dependencies, use the add command with the --zig flag:

$poly-bench add --zig git+https://github.com/example/pkg.git

The spec format is git+https://... or https://.... Dependencies are fetched using zig fetch --save=<dep_name> <url>.

Install

Running poly-bench install (or poly-bench build) runs zig fetch to download dependencies into the Zig cache (typically under ~/.cache/zig/p/<hash>/).

Build / Codegen

When you run poly-bench run, poly-bench generates Zig code and compiles with zig build. The generated code targets Zig 0.15+ primarily. 0.13 and 0.14 use different ArrayList and File APIs, so the generated code includes an __is_zig_13_or_14 branch for compatibility.

For packages written for Zig 0.13 or 0.14, poly-bench patches the loop syntax from for (items) |item, i| to for (items, 0..) |item, i| in cached dependencies for 0.15 compatibility.

Gotchas and Troubleshooting