FreeBSD compilation guide fails: unable to find library -lzstd

[JanBeh]

Using the instructions on the wiki page "Building Zig From Source", section "For FreeBSD" (revision at time of writing this issue) does not work as expected.

Used revision from master branch: 67e6df4

Commands:

mkdir build
cd build
cmake .. -DZIG_STATIC_LLVM=ON -DCMAKE_PREFIX_PATH="/usr/local/llvm20;/usr/local"
make

Output (snippet):

[ 94%] Linking CXX executable zig2
ld: error: unable to find library -lzstd
ld: error: unable to find library -lzstd
c++: error: linker command failed with exit code 1 (use -v to see invocation)
*** Error code 1

Stop.

Following the compilation guide, I would expect compilation to succeed.

It works (on my machine, with a FreeBSD that has been updated a few days ago) when using instead:

-cmake .. -DZIG_STATIC_LLVM=ON -DCMAKE_PREFIX_PATH="/usr/local/llvm20;/usr/local"
+cmake .. -DZIG_STATIC_ZSTD=ON -DCMAKE_PREFIX_PATH=/usr/local

(taken from this Ziggit forum post)

The compilation guide should be updated or marked as being outdated. Ideally, the problem would be fixed such that cmake .. without additional parameters works out of the box.

Related closed issue:

• Building on FreeBSD fails to find -lzstd #19617

[alexrp]

It works (on my machine, with a FreeBSD that has been updated a few days ago) when using instead:

It would be nice to get to the bottom of why this works before we go updating the instructions and potentially the CMake logic.