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diff --git a/content/posts/2023-09-12-mcl.smd b/content/posts/2023-09-12-mcl.smd new file mode 100644 index 0000000..a372fe2 --- /dev/null +++ b/content/posts/2023-09-12-mcl.smd @@ -0,0 +1,19 @@ +--- +.title = "Mcl (minecraft launcher)", +.author = "Martin Ashby", +.date = @date("2023-09-12T07:03:15+01:00"), +.layout = "single.shtml", +.custom = {"comments": true}, +--- + +I wrote a [minecraft launcher](https://code.mfashby.net/mcl/about/) in [zig](https://ziglang.org/) as a learning exercise. + +I got a lot of practice writing zig code and I learned a few things about it. + +- The [GeneralPurposeAllocator](https://ziglang.org/documentation/master/std/#A;std:heap.GeneralPurposeAllocator) is really useful for finding memory leaks, as is the std.testing.allocator for use in tests. +- The standard library HTTP client is really cool, but unfortunately fails on a lot of websites because it lacks TLSv1.2 support. +- Calling into C code is really easy. I used [libCURL](https://curl.se/libcurl/) instead of the zig stdlib and it was easy to write a wrapper around it. +- The standard library JSON parsing is good, but error messages are not verbose enough to help you and by default they don't indicate _where_ in the tree the problem is. This can be added but it's not obvious how to do it (spoiler: set the .diagnostics element on a std.json.Scanner). For types which the standard library can't cope with, there is an escape hatch: implement jsonParse method for that type. +- The builtin module has useful constants for checking the current operating system and CPU architecture, which I used for hacking in linux-aarch64 support. + +Finally however, I learned that minecraft on the pinebook pro sucks :( It's just not got enough power to run the game well.
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