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use case: ability to declare dependency on single file #17895

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use case: ability to declare dependency on single file#17895
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contributor friendlyThis issue is limited in scope and/or knowledge of Zig internals.enhancementSolving this issue will likely involve adding new logic or components to the codebase.zig build systemstd.Build, the build runner, `zig build` subcommand, package management
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urgent

Description

@techatrix
techatrix
opened on Nov 6, 2023

ZLS depends on Zig's langref.html.in file to extract the set of a builtin function.
Right now, this file is being manually downloaded during the build phase which does not integrate well with Zig's package manager and caching system. GitHub can't provide that file as a compressed tarball and fetching the entire repository source code is too wasteful.

It would be nice if there was a way to declare it as dependency to build.zig.zon:

    .dependencies = .{
        .langref = .{
            .url = "https://raw.githubusercontent.com/ziglang/zig/5b2ee5eacc177873ce674a307a1bebdfffeeae10/doc/langref.html.in",
            // have some option here to tell Zig that the url points to a single file and does not need to be decompressed
            .hash = "aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa",
        },
    },

Activity

  1. Vexu
    added
    proposalThis issue suggests language modifications. If it also has the "accepted" label then it is planned.
    zig build systemstd.Build, the build runner, `zig build` subcommand, package management
    use caseDescribes a real use case that is difficult or impossible, but does not propose a solution.
    on Nov 6, 2023
  2. Vexu
    added this to the 0.13.0 milestone on Nov 6, 2023

  3. marler8997 commented on Jun 29, 2024

    @marler8997
    marler8997
    on Jun 29, 2024
    Contributor

    Here's another use case I discovered today. I'm adding a build.zig file to build VVVVVV, and it has a data.zip you can download with free assets and levels. I added the data.zip to build.zig.zon, but the game actually needs the zip file, not the extracted contents. To solve this I "re-zip" the contents and install them to the bin directory for the game to load, however, if there was a way to instead download the zip file as just a "file", this would remove some unnecessary steps.

  4. andrewrk
    added
    acceptedThis proposal is planned.
    and removed
    use caseDescribes a real use case that is difficult or impossible, but does not propose a solution.
    on Sep 15, 2024

  5. andrewrk commented on Sep 15, 2024

    @andrewrk
    andrewrk
    on Sep 15, 2024
    Member

    This seems like it would be fully solved with .unpack = false, yeah?

  6. andrewrk
    modified the milestones: 0.14.0, 0.15.0 on Sep 15, 2024
  7. andrewrk
    added
    contributor friendlyThis issue is limited in scope and/or knowledge of Zig internals.
    on Sep 15, 2024

  8. marler8997 commented on Nov 20, 2024

    @marler8997
    marler8997
    on Nov 20, 2024
    Contributor

    I think I'll put together a PR for this imminently as I now have a real need for it, unsupported archive formats. With the ability to disable unpacking an archive, this unlocks the ability to download an archive in any format. It can then be extracted via another dependency.

    More specifically, I'm converting my win32metdata to JSON converter from C# to zig and the metadata itself is a nuget package. With this "unpack" option I can just download the nupkg file and extract it with my own extraction tool.

  9. marler8997
    added 3 commits that reference this issue on Nov 21, 2024

    Add `.unpack = false` and --no-unpack to build.zig.zon and zig fetch

    e78fd71

    Add `.unpack = false` and --no-unpack to build.zig.zon and zig fetch

    73c1251

    Add `.unpack = false` and --no-unpack to build.zig.zon and zig fetch

    df5f821

  10. 9 remaining items

  11. marler8997
    added a commit that references this issue on Nov 22, 2024

    Add `.unpack = false` and --no-unpack to build.zig.zon and zig fetch

    6e953cf
  12. marler8997
    added 3 commits that reference this issue on Feb 24, 2025

    Add `.unpack = false` and --no-unpack to build.zig.zon and zig fetch

    c7816a9

    Add `.no_unpack = PATH` and --no-unpack to build.zig.zon and zig fetch

    8ee494f

    Add `.no_unpack = PATH` and --no-unpack to build.zig.zon and zig fetch

    7d60290
  13. paperdev-code
    added 6 commits that reference this issue on Jul 6, 2025

    Add `.no_unpack = PATH` and --no-unpack to build.zig.zon and zig fetch

    9d57e24

    Add `.no_unpack = PATH` and --no-unpack to build.zig.zon and zig fetch

    6e3a76d

    Add `.no_unpack = PATH` and --no-unpack to build.zig.zon and zig fetch

    ca78b60

    Add `.no_unpack = PATH` and --no-unpack to build.zig.zon and zig fetch

    edaf036

    Add `.no_unpack = PATH` and --no-unpack to build.zig.zon and zig fetch

    487bc1c

    Add `.no_unpack = PATH` and --no-unpack to build.zig.zon and zig fetch

    105dd31
  14. alexrp
    added
    enhancementSolving this issue will likely involve adding new logic or components to the codebase.
    and removed
    proposalThis issue suggests language modifications. If it also has the "accepted" label then it is planned.
    acceptedThis proposal is planned.
    on Apr 22, 2026

  15. linusg commented on Apr 23, 2026

    @linusg
    linusg
    on Apr 23, 2026
    Collaborator

    https://codeberg.org/ziglang/zig/issues/32041

  16. linusg
    closed this as completedon Apr 23, 2026
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    contributor friendlyThis issue is limited in scope and/or knowledge of Zig internals.enhancementSolving this issue will likely involve adding new logic or components to the codebase.zig build systemstd.Build, the build runner, `zig build` subcommand, package management

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