Aro

May 29, 2025 ยท View on GitHub

Aro

Aro

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

The project intends to support standard C and all common extensions:

Versionstatus
C23Complete excluding Add IEEE 754 interchange and extended types
C17Complete excluding warnings Ensure C17 compatibility
C11Complete excluding warnings Ensure C11 compatibility
C99Complete excluding warnings Ensure C99 compatibility
C95Complete
C89Complete
GNU extensionsEnsure GNU C extension compatibility
Clang extensionsEnsure Clang C extension compatibility

Aro will be used as the C frontend for C to Zig translation in the Zig toolchain.

Codegen

Earlier there was a proof of concept backend capable of producing a valid hello world binary but it was removed to make way for a new more capable backend which is still under construction. The new backend will reuse parts of the self-hosted Zig compiler.

#542

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.