Installation

zig-pkl needs Zig 0.17.0 and a pkl executable. It has no other dependencies.

Add the package

zig fetch --save https://github.com/guanchzhou/zig-pkl/releases/download/v0.1.1/zig-pkl-0.1.1.tar.gz

zig fetch records the URL and the package hash in build.zig.zon. The release page lists checksums, SBOMs, and a signature for the archive. git+https://github.com/guanchzhou/zig-pkl#v0.1.1 fetches the same release from git, and git+https://github.com/guanchzhou/zig-pkl the latest commit.

Import the module in build.zig:

const zig_pkl = b.dependency("zig_pkl", .{
    .target = target,
    .optimize = optimize,
});
exe.root_module.addImport("zig_pkl", zig_pkl.module("zig_pkl"));

The same dependency provides the zig-pkl-gen code generator as zig_pkl.artifact("zig-pkl-gen"). See Code generation.

Install Pkl

zig-pkl talks to pkl server over standard input and output. Install Pkl 0.25.3 or newer from the Pkl releases or with a package manager, for example brew install pkl. Code generation needs Pkl 0.32.2.

The library never searches for Pkl on its own. You pass the command that starts the server:

const manager = try zig_pkl.Manager.init(allocator, io, &.{ "pkl", "server" }, zig_pkl.Logger.noop);

Use an absolute path when pkl is not on PATH. The examples in this repository read the path from the PKL_EXEC environment variable and fall back to pkl.

Check the setup

git clone https://github.com/guanchzhou/zig-pkl
cd zig-pkl
zig build test
zig build examples

zig build examples builds and runs every program in examples/. It fails when Pkl cannot be started.