futhark

This is a bit controversial, but in my opinion, just manually write bindings for the API surface you care about. There are tools to help automate the process ([c2nim](https://github.com/nim-lang/c2nim), [futhark](https://github.com/PMunch/futhark)), but these tools are mostly for C. Theoretically if you want to import a large C++ API (e.g. if you were importing Google's C++ codebase*), you could do so with libclang. I was working on an alternative to c2nim that supported Objective-c and C++, which used libclang, but it's currently in my project graveyard. If you're expecting a @cImport from Zig, then the closest you have to that is tools mentioned above to help with the process. * to be clear, I understand why Google does not want to use Nim instead of creating a new language (Carbon). i.e. readable code output, full control of the compil

You don't want nimterop, you want futhark (https://github.com/PMunch/futhark). The C FFI Nim library lineage goes c2nim --> nimterop --> something i forgot --> futhark.

> There is also the second issue that C is technically TWO languages: the C programming language and the C preprocessor. People mix the two together and things cannot be easily translated. A good basic example of this is people using `#define` for constants, and thus that name has no semantic meaning in the language itself. A translator has to try and make some semantic meaning from the intersection of these two languages, even if people don't make a distinction when making APIs. I completely agree that this a giant PITA. But glad it's being considered to be part of toolchain. I would also suggest you reconsider the functionality of importing C headers directly. Yes, they won't be as nice as Odin bindings but they'll definitely give a nice stop gap. Just recently I had a project that uses WebGPU but couldn't generate Odin bindings automat

Ones that have not been mentioned so far: - npeg lets you write PEGs inline in almost normal notation: https://github.com/zevv/npeg - owlkettle is a declarative macro-oriented library for GTK: https://github.com/can-lehmann/owlkettle - ratel is a framework for embedded programming: https://github.com/PMunch/ratel - futhark provides for much more automatic C interop: https://github.com/PMunch/futhark - nimpy allows calling Python code from Nim and vice versa: https://github.com/yglukhov/nimpy - questionable provides a lot of syntax sugar surrounding Option/Result types: https://github.com/codex-storage/questionable - nlvm is an unofficial LLVM backend: https://github.com/arnetheduck/nlvm - chronos is an alternative async/await backend: https://github.com/status-im/nim-chronos - cps allows arbitrary procedure rewriting in continuation passi

Things might changed but last time I checked you could easily call C function but you had to kind of export each single C function, structs etc. You couldn't just import single header file and be ready to call any function in the library. There is some pending project [0] futhark but not sure how mature it is and that still only for C libraries (instead of C++ or Rust) but maybe easy adopt for Zig - would be great nonetheless. [0] https://github.com/PMunch/futhark

Sorting out your edit/IDE/lib situation & re-learning is part of any PL switch in my experience (& just varies). Trade offs abound in most things. D is undeniably syntactically closer to C if that is the priority. I knew people in the initial Java era who insisted their next PL had to look like C. I know others who prefer Pythonic brevity and Nim is even more brief & to the point in many ways. Compatibility-wise, Nim can also just `emit` C/C++/Javascript (like D|Nim can just emit inline assembly) - arguably max compatibility that can even work with arbitrary non-portable backend compiler pragmas, `__int128` extensions, etc. OTOH, that also ties it to limitations of backends. Possibly relevant is https://github.com/nim-lang/c2nim & https://github.com/PMunch/futhark & the rather old/probably partly stale in both columns https://github.