pacman.c VS buddy_alloc

Floooh's pacman.c is an outstanding one file implementation of Pacman in C. He uses his own very good libraries (called sokol) to do the graphics and audio but you can definitely learn a lot from reading the code. It is very accurate too - it's based off the Pacman Dossier (copy included).

Some of my favorites are: sokol/pacman.c, Gunslinger, and gb

Not "serious" at all but I wrote a Pacman clone over the holidays as an excercise and test for my cross-platform C header bindinds:

https://github.com/floooh/pacman.zig

...and before that I did the same in C99 (might be useful for comparing the languages):

https://github.com/floooh/pacman.c

Disclaimer: I'm not a Zig expert at all, and the project doesn't really require most things where Zig differs from C. But I think writing small and "for-fun" projects like this is important for getting used to a language. I think one of Zig's big qualities is that it is so straightforward, after a few hundred lines you hardly have to look up things in the language documentation anymore.

If you need a sub-allocator with predictable performance feel free to give it a try. The code is here and it is licensed under the 0BSD license, making it as lax and as close to public domain as possible. Comments, issues and PRs are always welcomed and appreciated. Thanks!

I maintain a project that's not technically MISRA compliant (due to being a memory allocator and MISRA disallowing the very idea) and I keep it at 100% test coverage with support for multiple compilers and operating systems. Over time I had a few users reporting back - since it's working for them I count that as success. Is it wildly popular ? Of course not, but it doesn't have to be.

You are right about the tests - they are written with 64-bit in mind. I ought to rework them to switch sizes based on arch but that will take a weekend. I've filed https://github.com/spaskalev/buddy_alloc/issues/19 to track this.

I also maintain a application-based malloc (that doesn't do obtaining and releasing memory through the OS, just managing sub-diving a larger memory block into smaller requests) at https://github.com/spaskalev/buddy_alloc - feel free to ping me with any questions about it.

I'm the author of https://github.com/spaskalev/buddy_alloc - a custom memory allocator for C (modern C11, works with C++ as well) designed for predictable and repeatable performance. It is suitable for use in embedded, games and any other system with soft or hard real-time demands. It has 100% line and branch test coverage and uses a fixed amount of space on the call stack when called. Recently the project had its first external contribution as well. Cheers!

I made a memory allocator that turned out rather neat - https://github.com/spaskalev/buddy_alloc