generate.md

generate command

zigmod generate

• This command takes no parameters and will generate a deps.zig in the root of your project. This is the file that you will then import into your build.zig to automatically add all the necessary packages and (any) C code that may be in your dependencies.
• This behavior is similar to zigmod fetch but it does the fetching of dependencies in deps.zig itself to enable your users to only need zig build (and optionally git).
• You as an program author will still need zigmod installed during development, but consumers of your app can get started with only a git clone and zig build!
• To this end, a deps.zig made by running zigmod generate will want to be checked into source control. Don't forget to remove it from .gitignore.
• The version of dependencies fetched by deps.zig from this command is based on your zigmod.lock so no surprise breaks from users.

For a full reference on the fields available in deps.zig you can check here.

Adding deps.zig to your build.zig

 const std = @import("std");
+const deps = @import("./deps.zig");
 
 pub fn build(b: *std.build.Builder) void {
     const target = b.standardTargetOptions(.{});
 
     const mode = b.standardReleaseOptions();
 
     const exe = b.addExecutable("hello", "src/main.zig");
     exe.setTarget(target);
     exe.setBuildMode(mode);
+    deps.addAllTo(exe);
     exe.install();

If you don't want Zigmod to handle adding packages to your project and only do resource fetching then deps.fetch(exe) may be called independently of deps.addAllTo(exe).

deps.addAllTo(exe) will call deps.fetch(exe) inside of it, so as to be compatible with deps.zig generated by zigmod fetch.