Proposal: remove anonymousDependency once relative paths are supported in build.zig.zon

[mlugg]

Once #14603 or similar is merged, std.Build.anonymousDependency is redundant: its use cases can be instead handled by specifying a local path in build.zig.zon and calling std.Build.dependency as you would for a remote dependency.

In fact, anonymousDependency is strictly less useful. Here are some key use cases it does not support:

• Temporarily overriding a dependency path for a package to refer to a local development copy. This will be particularly useful once ability to specify additional build dependency mirrors that affect any package in the full dependency tree #14292 is implemented.
• Referencing a vendored dependency which in turn has remote dependencies. This is impossible via anonymousDependency because the build system cannot call into the actual package manager (which is integrated into the compiler).

As such, std.Build.anonymousDependency should be removed, giving one obvious and straightforward way to reference local dependencies.

[binarycraft007]

Once #14603 or similar is merged, std.Build.anonymousDependency is redundant: its use cases can be instead handled by specifying a local path in build.zig.zon and calling std.Build.dependency as you would for a remote dependency.

In fact, anonymousDependency is strictly less useful. Here are some key use cases it does not support:

* Temporarily overriding a dependency path for a package to refer to a local development copy. This will be particularly useful once [ability to specify additional build dependency mirrors that affect any package in the full dependency tree #14292](https://github.com/ziglang/zig/issues/14292) is implemented.

* Referencing a vendored dependency which in turn has remote dependencies. This is impossible via `anonymousDependency` because the build system cannot call into the actual package manager (which is integrated into the compiler).

As such, std.Build.anonymousDependency should be removed, giving one obvious and straightforward way to reference local dependencies.

what about the use case where I need to embed artifact in one build step to another:
https://github.com/binarycraft007/wechat-hook/blob/main/build.zig#L34
https://github.com/binarycraft007/wechat-hook/blob/main/src/main.zig#L14

maybe we can restrict anonymousDependency's usecase without removing it. because in some usecases, like the one I showed above, file dependency in build.zig.zon can't replace that, because we won't know artifact's path until it's generated.

[mlugg]

This issue is about dependencies between packages (in the sense of the package manager), not about Zig modules. The code you reference is not using anonymousDependency.

[binarycraft007]

This issue is about dependencies between packages (in the sense of the package manager), not about Zig modules. The code you reference is not using anonymousDependency.

sorry, I misunderstood it, thanks for the clarification.