ability to construct a LazyPath out of any file from a dependency package #16643
Description
The idea here is that you can put an arbitrary file contents in your build.zig.zon, like this:
.{
.dependencies = .{
.foo = .{
.url = "https://example.com/foobar.tar.gz",
.hash = "12209e851f7e2c6ba2f01de3e11b1771f03e49666065320abd8414aac152bfa75fae",
},
},
}Normally, at this point, one would activate the build.zig script of the dependency like this:
const foo_dep = b.dependency("foo", .{
.target = target,
.optimize = optimize,
// ...other options...
});However, this issue is about the use case where the dependency is not a zig package, but a bundle of arbitrary files.
The idea is that you can access arbitrary files as std.Build.LazyPath objects, like this:
pub fn build(b: *std.Build) !void {
// ...
const lazy_path = b.dependencyPath("foo", "path/inside/dependency.txt");
// now you can pass it anywhere a lazy path is accepted:
run_step.addFileArg(lazy_path);
// or you can access the file directly from build script logic:
const contents = try std.fs.readFileAlloc(lazy_path.resolve());
// ...
}Using it via the LazyPath API would help with #14597, because resolution of the path would force the package to be downloaded.