The translate-c build system step and wrapping the output in a Zig module is currently about 10 lines in build.zig, and I guess this could be reduced further by merging those two steps into a single step.

I think that's an acceptable compromise.

Especially for C libraries which require configuration via preprocessor defines or compilation flags, the build.zig way is a lot cleaner than the @-builtins that are currently used (IMHO).