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A list of open source C libraries

From cppreference.com
< c‎ | links

The objective of this page is to build a comprehensive list of open-source C libraries, so that when one needs an implementation of particular functionality, one needn’t to waste time searching on web (DuckDuckGo, Google, Bing, etc.)

If you know a library that might be useful to others, please add a link to it here. There are no restrictions on what can be included except that the source of the library must be readily available to download.

The page is provided “as is” - with the hope of being useful, but without any warranties. Outdated, misleading or wrong links might appear here. If you’ve noticed one of these, it would be great if you fixed the error.

Contents

[edit] Package managers

Package manager Description
build2 An open-source (MIT), cross-platform build toolchain that aims to approximate Rust Cargo’s convenience for developing and packaging C/C++ projects while providing more depth and flexibility, especially in the build system.
cget Cmake package retrieval. This can be used to download and install cmake packages.
cmodule Non-intrusive cmake dependency management.
conan Decentralized, open-source (MIT), C/C++ package manager.
CPM.cmake A cmake script that adds dependency management capabilities to cmake. It’s built as a thin wrapper around cmake’s FetchContent module that adds version control, caching, a simple API and more.
hunter A cmake driven cross-platform package manager for C/C++ projects.
spack A package manager for supercomputers, Linux, and macOS. It makes installing scientific software easy. It isn’t tied to a particular language.
teaport A cocoapods inspired dependency manager.
vcpkg A C/C++ package manager for Windows, Linux, and macOS.
xmake A cross-platform Lua-based C/C++ build tool and package manager.

[edit] Libraries

[edit] Operating system

Access control
Library Description License Configuration
acl
apparmor
Extended attributes
Library Description License Configuration
attr

[edit] Graphical user interface

Library Description License Configuration
IUP
Nuklear A single-header ANSI C immediate mode cross-platform GUI library. (Doc)
lvgl Powerful and easy-to-use embedded GUI library with many widgets, advanced visual effects (opacity, anti-aliasing, animations) and low memory requirements (16K RAM, 64K Flash). (Doc)
tiny file dialogs A single C cross-platform file (no init, no main loop, 6 modal function calls)

[edit] Gtk+ widgets

Library Description License Configuration
appmenu-gtk
ghex
goocanvas
gtkhotkey
gtk+
gtksourceview
gtkspell
gucharmap
webkitgtk

[edit] Microsoft Excel

Library Description License Configuration
libxlsxwriter
xlsx_drone

[edit] Audio

CD
Library Description License Configuration
cdparanoia
Codecs
Library Description License Configuration
aften
faad2
wavpack
Infrastructure
Library Description License Configuration
alsa-lib
portaudio
Speech synthesis
Library Description License Configuration
espeak
flite

[edit] Video

Codecs
Library Description License Configuration
schroedinger
video4linux

[edit] Files

Library Description License Configuration
gmime

[edit] Maths

Library Description License Configuration
gsl The GNU Scientific Library (GSL) is a numerical library for C and C++ (Src) GPL make
Integer Multi-Dimensional Interpolation
Library Description License Configuration
argyll
Linear algebra
Library Description License Configuration
atlas
blas
eigen
Finance
Library Description License Configuration
ta-lib
FFT
Library Description License Configuration
fftw3
Multiprecision
Library Description License Configuration
gmp
Signal Processing
Library Description License Configuration
liquid-dsp
vsipl
vsipl++

[edit] Graphics

Library Description License Configuration
allegro Allegro-5 is a cross-platform multimedia library mainly aimed at video game and multimedia programming.
babl
Bgfx A cross-platform, graphics API agnostic, "Bring Your Own Engine/Framework" style rendering library. BSD 2
cairo
raylib A cross-platform C99 gamedev library featuring OpenGL hardware acceleration, full 3D support, skeletal animation, shaders, fonts, audio, math, GUI, etc. (Src) (Doc) Zlib cmake, make, vcpkg, zig
SAIL Squirrel Abstract Image Library is a small, fast, and cross-platform image decoding library.
SDL Simple DirectMedia Layer is a cross-platform library for input, audio, drawing and much more.
SIGIL
Simple2d A small, simple, cross-platform SDL2/OpenGL wrapper that provides drawing, media, windowing, and input capabilities. MIT

[edit] Generic

Library Description License Configuration
libmixf

[edit] Interprocess

Library Description License Configuration
dbus
dee
gdbus

[edit] Databases

Library Description License Configuration
berkeley_db
libfmrt
libmongoc Official C driver library for MongoDB (Doc). It offers optimized APIs for CRUD operations, comprehensive feature support (including BSON) and support for different authentication mechanisms enabling efficient integration of MongoDB functionality into C-based applications. Apache 2.0 CMake
lmdb
SQLite A C library that implements a small, fast, self-contained, high-reliability, full-featured, SQL database engine. SQLite is the most used database engine in the world. (Src) (Doc) Public Domain

[edit] Configuration

Library Description License Configuration
libconfig
libconfini

[edit] Environment

Library Description License Configuration
libXDGdirs

[edit] Communications

Library Description License Configuration
gsoap
KCP A fast and reliable ARQ protocol that helps applications to reduce network latency. MIT
libcurl
libmicrohttpd
libsagui
MQTT-C Github URL MIT
nanomsg A socket library that provides common communication patterns; has no dependencies; cross-platform. Superceded by the nng. MIT/X11
UCX Unified Communication X (UCX) provides an optimized communication layer for Message Passing (MPI), Shared Memory (PGAS) and RPC/data-centric applications. BSD3
zeromq
libusb A portable C library that provides generic access to USB devices.

[edit] Compression

Library Description License Configuration
bzip2
lz4
zlib

[edit] Concurrency

Library Description License Configuration
ck
MutexGear Mutex-only synchronization (wheel, rwlock, work queues). The MutexGear Library

[edit] Data types

Library Description License Configuration
bstrlib
datastd
str Yet another string library for C language.

[edit] XML

Library Description License Configuration
expat
gsoap

[edit] Metrics

Library Description License Configuration
edlib

[edit] Object oriented programming

Library Description License Configuration
Cello
GObject

[edit] Web Frontend

Library Description License Configuration
cgit

[edit] Debug

Library Description License Configuration
dbg-macro A few macros that print and return the value of a given expression for quick and dirty debugging, inspired by Rust’s dbg!(...) macro and its C++ variant. MIT

[edit] See also

C++ documentation for Non-ANSI/ISO Libraries

[edit] External links

1.  A list of C unit testing frameworks — at Wikipedia
2.  A curated list of (awesome) C and C++ libraries — at GitHub
3.  A list of C open-source games and frameworks — at GitHub.io