libap is a port of LLVM's arbitrary-precision (AP) numerics types to Zig, with an additional C API on top to allow C programs to make use of the library as well.
Note that the types offered by this library have a fixed, predetermined bit
width and semantics; they do not grow to maintain precision. For example, when
creating an ap.Int, you have to specify exactly how many bits it should
occupy. Any operation that produces a new value will have the same bit width,
and any operation involving two ap.Int values requires that they have the
same bit width. Contrast with the types in
std.math.big which
grow as necessary.
Most applications that use arbitrary-precision numbers do want them to grow in
order to maintain full precision. In other words, most users should look to
std.math.big (or an equivalent C library). The types offered by libap are
primarily useful for compilers, emulators, cryptography, and other fields where
the desired precision is bounded and/or strict semantics are required.
libap currently covers the following LLVM types:
Changes made to these types in LLVM are periodically synchronized here. The
current master code is based on LLVM commit
bbc6504b3d2f237ed7e84dcaecb228bf2124f72e.
The minimum Zig version supported by this project can be found in the
minimum_zig_version field of the build.zig.zon file. We
generally try to track the latest release of Zig.
To use libap in your Zig project, first add it as a package:
zig fetch --save=ap https://github.com/vezel-dev/libap/archive/vX.Y.Z.tar.gz
# Or, to use Git:
zig fetch --save=ap git+https://github.com/vezel-dev/libap.git#vX.Y.Z(You can find the latest version on the releases page.)
Then, consume the ap module in your build.zig:
const ap = b.dependency("ap", .{
.target = target,
.optimize = optimize,
});
exe.root_module.addImport("ap", ap.module("ap"));You should now be able to @import("ap") in your Zig code.
If you plan to use libap as a C library, you will likely want to install it
somewhere on your system since C does not have a package manager. To do so, grab
a source code archive from the
releases page, and run
zig build --prefix $HOME/.local -Doptimize=ReleaseFast or similar.
The result will look like this:
$ tree $HOME/.local
/home/alexrp/.local
├── include
│ └── ap
│ └── ap.h
└── lib
├── libap.a
├── libap.so
└── pkgconfig
└── libap.pcAssuming you have set your C_INCLUDE_PATH, LD_LIBRARY_PATH, and
PKG_CONFIG_PATH environment variables appropriately, you should now be able
to use libap like any other C library.
This project is licensed under the terms found in
LICENSE-LLVM, i.e. the same license as the C++ code from which
this library was ported. This is the new LLVM license following the
LLVM relicensing effort.
