How to use dependency as dynamic library?

[gluax]

Hey all! Sorry if this is a newbie question, but I am trying to figure out if there's an out of the box way to compile this as dynamic library?

Wondering because I wanted to set up hot reloading with this.

When I tried having a game dynamic library and an executable I build that reloads the game dynamic library it seemed the raylib instances were separate with the dependency artifact and module.

So I tried hacking around building this dependency dynamically and using it in both, without having to do a cImport, but not sure that's possible or if I'm doing something wrong as I keep running into different errors of all kinds.

I didn't see any examples or older issues on this as well.

[Not-Nik]

This isn't supported currently, but maybe we can add an option that makes the artifact dependency build as a dynamic library. I'm not awfully familiar with all the build options you can pass as they aren't documented to my knowledge, but maybe someone else knows if this is possible

[gluax]

I did actually manage to get it to build as a dynamic library. Though I'm not sure I did it the proper way this was how I managed to accomplish it:

const raylib_dep = b.dependency("raylib-zig", .{
  .target = target,
  .optimize = optimize,
});

const raylib = b.addSharedLibrary(.{
  .name = "raylib",
  .root_source_file = raylib_dep.path("lib/raylib.zig"),
  .target = target,
  .optimize = optimize,
});
raylib.linkLibC();
b.installArtifact(raylib);

You can then do something like:

exe.linkLibC();
exe.addLibraryPath(b.path("zig-out/lib"));
exe.linkSystemLibrary("raylib");

This required using a @cImport instead of an @import. I couldn't figure out a way to use a regular import and the dynamic lib, but if anyone has any ideas that'd be great :).

[gluax]

I stand corrected. What I did above did not produce a correct dynamic library file. I checked the symbol table of what I built with nm.

While I'm not sure how to get the dependency to build the dynamic library I learned you can force both instances to use the same instance of raylib(in this instance the library is one I built from the raylib source) via:

const raylib_dep = b.dependency("raylib-zig", .{
   .target = target,
   .optimize = optimize,
});
const raylib_mod = raylib_dep.module("raylib");

// Create the DLL for the game library.
const gamelib = b.addSharedLibrary(.{
  .name = "game",
  .root_source_file = b.path("src/game.zig"),
  .target = target,
  .optimize = optimize,
  .version = .{ .major = 1, .minor = 0, .patch = 0 },
});
gamelib.linkLibC();
// gamelib.addLibraryPath(b.path("zig-out/lib"));
gamelib.linkSystemLibrary("raylib");
gamelib.root_module.addImport("raylib", raylib_mod);
b.installArtifact(gamelib);

const exe = b.addExecutable(.{
  .name = "hotreload",
  .root_source_file = b.path("src/main.zig"),
  .target = target,
  .optimize = optimize,
});
exe.linkLibC();
// exe.addLibraryPath(b.path("zig-out/lib"));
exe.linkSystemLibrary("raylib");
exe.root_module.addImport("raylib", raylib_mod);
b.installArtifact(exe);