Awesome C

A curated list of C good stuff. This list contains only [open source][13] code (as defined by the linked Open Source Definition), and sellers who aren't evil for physical resources.

This is released under a Creative Commons-Attribution-ShareAlike license, version 4 (SPDX code CC-BY-SA-4.0). You can find its text in the LICENSE file.

An important note: This project does not index anything C++-related; only pure C stuff is considered.

Note for contributors: If you want to make a pull request, please read CONTRIBUTING.md first.

Contents

• AI
• Benchmarking
• Build Systems
• Compilers
• Compression
• Concurrency and Parallelism
• Crypto
• Database
• Data Structures
• Debugging
• Documentation Generation
• Editors
• Embeddable Scripting Engines
• Frameworks
• Game Programming
• Graphics
• Graphical User Interface
• Hashing
• Learning, Reference and Tutorials
  • Reference resources online
  • Beginner resources online
  • Intermediate resources online
  • Advanced resources online
  • Reference books
  • Beginner books
  • Intermediate books
  • Advanced books
• Lexing and Parsing
• Memory Management
• Multimedia
• Networking and Internet
• Numerical
• Profiling
• Regex
• Serialization
• Source Code Collections
• Standard Libraries
  • Template Libraries
• String Manipulation
• Structured File Processing
  • CSV
  • JSON
  • INI
  • Others
  • XML
  • YAML
• Testing
• Text Editor Extensions
• Tools
• Utilities
• Web Frameworks
• Windows Environments

AI

Computer vision, neural nets, machine learning, and other similar things. Basically, if your university calls it AI, it lives here.

• [ccv][195] - C-based/Cached/Core Computer Vision library; modern computer vision. [BSD-3-Clause][BSD-3-Clause]
• [Cranium][525] - Portable, header-only ANN library in C99. [MIT][MIT]
• [FANN][325] - Fast Artifical Neural Network library; an implementation of neural networks. [GPL-2.0-only][GPL-2.0-only]
• [Genann][412] - Simple ANN in C89, without additional dependencies. [Zlib][Zlib]
• [KANN][327] - Two-file ANN library. [MIT][MIT]
• [LibDEEP][477] - Deep learning library. [BSD-3-Clause][BSD-3-Clause]
• [m2cgen][610] - A CLI tool to transpile trained classic ML models into a native C code with zero dependencies. [MIT][MIT]
• [sod][611] - An Embedded Computer Vision & Machine Learning Library. [GPL-3.0-only][GPL-3.0-only]

Benchmarking

Comparing the performance of various subsystems across different chip/system architectures.

• [b63][553] - Light-weight micro-benchmarking tool for C. [Apache-2.0][Apache-2.0]

Build Systems

Tools that automate the building and testing of projects in C.

• [Autotools][583] - Also known as the GNU build system (automake, autoconf, libtool...) is one of the most widely used build systems (configure && make). [GPL-1.0-or-later][335]
• [Autotools project skeleton][584] - A simple autotools skeleton (template) to quickly bootstrap new projects. [BSD-2-Clause][BSD-2-Clause]
• [CMake][329] - Cross-platform family of tools designed to build, package and test software. [BSD-3-Clause][BSD-3-Clause]
• [GNU Make][324] - Tool which controls the generation of executables and other non-source files of a program. [GPL-3.0-or-later][GPL-3.0-or-later]
• [Meson][368] - Extremely fast, user-friendly build system. Based on Ninja. [Apache-2.0][Apache-2.0]
• [Premake][435] - Command-line utility which reads a scripted definition of a software project and uses it to generate project files for Visual Studio and GNU Make. Other targets are also being worked on. [BSD-3-Clause][BSD-3-Clause]
• [SCons][521] - Software construction tool using Python. [MIT][MIT]
• [xmake][271] - Cross-platform build utility. [Apache-2.0][Apache-2.0]
• [zproject][420] - Project generator and build system support tool. [MPL-2.0][MPL-2.0]

Compilers

Compilers, as well as compiler- and compilation-related tooling.

• [ccache][466] - Compiler cache designed to speed up recompilation. [GPL-3.0-or-later][GPL-3.0-or-later]
• [Clang][38] - Compiler for LLVM. Supports C11. [NCSA][NCSA]
• [cproc][574] - A C11 compiler using QBE as a backend. [ISC][ISC]
• [distcc][452] - Program that allows builds to be distributed among several machines. [GPL-2.0-or-later][GPL-2.0-or-later]
• [Firm][361] - Library that provides a graph-based intermediate representation, optimizations and assembly code generation suitable for use in compilers. Comes with an example C front-end under the same license. [LGPL-2.1-only][LGPL-2.1-only]
• [GCC][40] - Provides a C compiler as part of its compiler set. Supports C11. [GPL-3.0-or-later][GPL-3.0-or-later]
• [PCC][74] - Venerable compiler. Supports C99. [Various licenses][75], all open source.

Compression

• [blosc][445] - Extremely fast, multi-threaded, meta-compressor library. Various licenses, all open source.
• [Brotli][24] - General-purpose lossless compression algorithm library. Has speeds comparable to DEFLATE, but much higher compression ratios. [MIT][MIT].
• [clzip][432] - C version of the high-quality data compressor [Lzip][433] (LZMA implementation). [GPL-2.0-or-later][GPL-2.0-or-later]
• [CRoaring][481] - C implementation of [Roaring bitmaps][482]. [Apache-2.0][Apache-2.0]
• [FiniteStateEntropy][2] - Two highly efficient compression codecs optimized for modern CPUs. [BSD-2-Clause][BSD-2-Clause]
• [DENSITY][506] - Super-fast compression library. [BSD-3-Clause][BSD-3-Clause]
• [heatshrink][514] - Data compression/decompression library for embedded and real-time systems. [ISC][ISC]
• [fast_zlib][533] - Improved zlib, which runs 2 to 10 times faster. [BSD-3-Clause][BSD-3-Clause]
• [fastLZ][586] - Lightning-fast lossless compression library (LZ77 type). Embbedable on small target like ARM Cortex-M families. Source code directly embbedable on your project ( a pair of h/c files), no dynamic memory allocation. [MIT][MIT]
• [huffandpuff][214] - Minimal Huffman encoder and decoder. Public domain.
• [libzip][587] - C library for reading, creating and modifying zip archives. [BSD-3-Clause][BSD-3-Clause]
• [libbzip2][427] - Patent-free, high-quality data compression library. [BSD-4-Clause][BSD-4-Clause]
• [Lizard][489] - Formerly LZ5; an efficient compressor with fast decompression. Achieves compression ratios comparable with zip and zlib at decompression speeds of 1000MB/s and faster. [BSD-2-Clause][BSD-2-Clause]
• [lz4][508] - Library for an extremely fast compression algorithm. [BSD-2-Clause][BSD-2-Clause]
• [lzo][338] - Fast data compression library. [GPL-2.0-or-later][GPL-2.0-or-later]
• [pixz][49] - Parallel, indexed xz compressor. [BSD-2-Clause][BSD-2-Clause]
• [shoco][363] - Compressor for small text strings. [MIT][MIT]
• [SIMDComp][519] - Simple library for compressing lists of integers using binary packing. Makes use of SIMD instructions on x86. [BSD-3-Clause][BSD-3-Clause]
• [smaz][364] - Efficient string compression library. [BSD-3-Clause][BSD-3-Clause]
• [squash][393] - Compression abstraction library, complete with some utilities. [MIT][MIT]
• [TurboPFor][471] - Fastest integer compression. [GPL-2.0-or-later][GPL-2.0-or-later]
• [TurboRLE][484] - Most efficient run-length encoding. [GPL-2.0-or-later][GPL-2.0-or-later]
• [zip][520] - Really really small zip archive processing library. [Unlicense][Unlicense]
• [Zlib][230] - Massively spiffy yet delicately unobtrusive compression library. [BSD-3-Clause][BSD-3-Clause]
• [libarchive][548] - libarchive is a portable, efficient C library that can read and write streaming archives in a variety of formats. [BSD-3-Clause][BSD-3-Clause]
• [zlib-ng][1] - Zlib replacement with optimizations for 'next-generation' systems. [BSD-3-Clause][BSD-3-Clause]
• [Zstandard][510] - Fast, lossless compression algorithm, targeting real-time compression scenarios at zlib-level or better compression ratios. [BSD-3-Clause][BSD-3-Clause]

Concurrency and Parallelism

• [cchan][243] - Small library for channel constructs for inter-thread communication. Public domain.
• [checkedthreads][465] - A simple library for parallelism, with built-in checking for race conditions. [BSD-2-Clause][BSD-2-Clause]
• [ck][242] - Concurrency primitives, safe memory reclamation mechanisms and non-blocking data structures. [BSD-2-Clause][BSD-2-Clause]
• [FCFS RWLock][540] - First-come first-served Readers/Writers lock for POSIX threads. [CC0-1.0][CC0-1.0]
• [Libaco][599] - A blazing fast and lightweight C asymmetric coroutine library. [Apache-2.0][Apache-2.0]
• [libconcurrent][390] - Concurrent programming library, using coroutines, for C11. [BSD-3-Clause][BSD-3-Clause]
• [libcsp][572] - High performance concurrency C library influenced by the CSP model. [MIT][MIT]
• [libdill][442] - Library which makes structured concurrent programming easy. [MIT][MIT]
• [libhl][478] - Library implementing a thread-safe API to manage a range of data structures. Also provides some supporting functions and structures for concurrent and lockfree programming. [LGPL-3.0-only][LGPL-3.0-only]
• [liburcu][474] - Data synchronization library, which scales linearly with the number of cores. [LGPL-2.1-or-later][LGPL-2.1-or-later]
• [mill][352] - Go-style concurrency. [MIT][MIT]
• [oclkit][311] - Two-file OpenCL wrapper. [GPL-3.0-or-later][GPL-3.0-or-later]
• [OCL-MLA][312] - OpenCL Mid-Level Abstractions. [BSD-3-Clause][BSD-3-Clause]
• [OpenMP][37] - Set of pragmas designed to allow for easy parallelization of code. Standard (licensing not applicable).
• [Open MPI][284] - Message passing interface implementation. [BSD-3-Clause][BSD-3-Clause]
• [pal][459] - Optimized library for maths, parallel processing and data movement. [Apache-2.0][Apache-2.0]
• [pth][180] - Portable implementation for non-preemptive priority-based scheduling for multiple threads of execution. [GPL-3.0-or-later][GPL-3.0-or-later]
• [pthreads][146] - POSIX thread library. Standard (no license applicable).
• [TinyCThread][115] - Portable, small implementation of the C11 threads API. [Zlib][Zlib]

Crypto

Mostly library implementations of well-known cryptographic algorithms or protocols.

• [GNU SASL][160] - Implementation of the Simple Authentication and Security Layer and a few common SASL mechanism. [GPL-3.0-or-later][GPL-3.0-or-later]
• [GnuTLS][112] - Secure communication library, implementing SSL, TLS and DTLS. [LGPL-2.1-or-later][LGPL-2.1-or-later]
• [libgcrypt][142] - General-purpose cryptography library, with a range of available ciphers. [LGPL-2.1-or-later][LGPL-2.1-or-later]
• [OpenSSL][110] - Implementation of the SSL and TLS protocols. Also includes a cryptography library. [Dual Licensed under the OpenSSL License and the SSLeay License][111].
• [liboqs][493] - Library for quantum-resistant cryptographicl algorithms. [MIT][MIT]
• [libsodium][198] - Modern and easy-to-use crypto library. [MIT][MIT]
• [libtomcrypt][299] - Fairly comprehensive, modular and portable cryptographic toolkit. Public domain.
• [mbed TLS][291] - Another crypto implementation. [Apache-2.0][Apache-2.0]
• [MIRACL][480] - Multiprecision Integer and Rational Arithmetic Cryptographic Library; an SDK for elliptic curve cryptography. [AGPL-3.0-or-later][AGPL-3.0-or-later]
• [retter][507] - Collection of hash functions, ciphers, tools, libraries and materials related to cryptography and security. Public domain.
• [s2n][359] - C99 implementation of the TLS/SSL protocols, designed to be simple, fast and with security as a priority. [Apache-2.0][Apache-2.0]
• [sphlib][526] - Set of implementations of various hash functions, including several cryptographic ones. [MIT][MIT]
• [trezor-crypto][485] - Heavily optimized crypto algorithms for embedded devices. [MIT][MIT]
• [bfish][598] - A single include ANSI-C Blowfish ECB crypto library. Public domain.

Database

Databases and data stores with C APIs.

• [BerkeleyDB][380] - Library for a high-performance embedded database for key-value data. [AGPL-3.0-only][AGPL-3.0-only]
• [DuckDB][702] - Fast in-process analytical database, with C API. [MIT][MIT]
• [EJDB2][568] - Embeddable JSON Database engine. [MIT][MIT]
• [Groonga][524] - Columnar store with full-text search. [LGPL-2.1-only][LGPL-2.1-only]
• [Hiredis][201] - Minimalistic client library for Redis. [BSD-3-Clause][BSD-3-Clause]
• [libmongoc][233] - High-performance client library for [MongoDB][234]. [Apache-2.0][Apache-2.0]