Zed + Roc + Zig — The Full Stack

What each piece is

Tool	Type	Role in the stack
Zed	Code editor	Where I write all the code
Roc	High-level language	The language I use to build applications
Zig	Systems language	The language the Roc compiler is written in and a language I can write in directly

How they fit together

I started by installing Zed, a fast, modern code editor. Inside Zed I can write two different languages:

• Roc — a friendly, purely functional language that feels pleasant to use while still compiling to fast native code.
• Zig — a simple, explicit systems language (a modern alternative to C) that gives me full control and tiny binaries.

Interesting connection: the Roc compiler itself is written in Zig. So when I write Roc code in Zed, a Zig-based compiler turns it into a native executable.

Quick mental model

text

Zed (editor)
 ├── I write Roc code here  →  Roc compiler (written in Zig)  →  fast binary
 └── I write Zig code here  →  Zig compiler                   →  fast binary

Setup summary (Debian)

Zed Downloaded from zed.dev and launched normally.

Roc

Bash

curl --proto '=https' --tlsv1.2 -sSf https://roc-lang.org/install_roc.sh | sh
source ~/.bashrc

Zig Installed the official Linux binary and added it to PATH.

Daily workflow aliases

Roc

• rv → version
• rr file.roc → run
• rb file.roc → build
• rbo file.roc → optimized build
• rrepl → REPL
• rfmt → format
• rcheck file.roc → type check only

Zig

• zv → version
• zr file.zig → run
• zb file.zig → build (debug)
• zbs file.zig → build small
• zbf file.zig → build fast
• zfmt → format
• ztest → run tests
• zbuild / zbr → for projects created with zig init

In Zed

• Open the command palette (Ctrl+Shift+P)
• Search for “extensions”
• Install the roc extension for syntax highlighting and language support
• Zig already has solid support

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This is the full setup that began with downloading Zed and eventually included both Roc and Zig.