C Library

Open-source C projects categorized as Library

Top 23 C Library Projects

  1. libcurl

    A command line tool and library for transferring data with URL syntax, supporting DICT, FILE, FTP, FTPS, GOPHER, GOPHERS, HTTP, HTTPS, IMAP, IMAPS, LDAP, LDAPS, MQTT, POP3, POP3S, RTMP, RTMPS, RTSP, SCP, SFTP, SMB, SMBS, SMTP, SMTPS, TELNET, TFTP, WS and WSS. libcurl offers a myriad of powerful features

    Project mention: curl, it's got u | dev.to | 2025-05-14

    I like curl it's available as a command line tool and is pretty ubiquitous across platforms.

  2. InfluxDB

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  3. FreeRDP

    FreeRDP is a free remote desktop protocol library and clients

  4. libgit2

    A cross-platform, linkable library implementation of Git that you can use in your application.

    Project mention: Git Without a Forge | news.ycombinator.com | 2025-03-05

    That does get intense pretty quickly, if you're generating a source and commit/diff pages for every file * every commit. Probably just single commits would make the most sense and then a source browser for each branch.

    That said, JavaScript libgit2 is totally a thing [1], so doing it "properly" in a client app is totally possible.

    [1]: https://github.com/libgit2/libgit2/issues/4376

  5. libimobiledevice

    A cross-platform protocol library to communicate with iOS devices

    Project mention: But what if I want a faster horse? | news.ycombinator.com | 2025-04-11

    more maddening yet is you can actually mount it as a limited storage device using https://libimobiledevice.org/ under linux, but not MacOs(to my knowledge)

  6. lwan

    Experimental, scalable, high performance HTTP server

  7. cute_headers

    Collection of cross-platform one-file C/C++ libraries with no dependencies, primarily used for games

    Project mention: Collection of one-file C/C++ libraries with no dependencies, primarily for games | news.ycombinator.com | 2025-02-08

    Since you left this "optimize me" comment here:

    https://github.com/RandyGaul/cute_headers/blob/755849fc2819d...

    See an optimized quaternion multiplication implementation in SSE by me here:

    https://stackoverflow.com/questions/18542894/how-to-multiply...

  8. Klib

    A standalone and lightweight C library

  9. SaaSHub

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  10. bdwgc

    The Boehm-Demers-Weiser conservative C/C++ Garbage Collector (bdwgc, also known as bdw-gc, boehm-gc, libgc)

    Project mention: Maxima in the browser using Embedded Common Lisp on WASM | news.ycombinator.com | 2025-01-28

    https://github.com/ivmai/bdwgc/issues/650

    Most notably:

    ```

  11. unikraft

    A next-generation cloud native kernel designed to unlock best-in-class performance, security primitives and efficiency savings.

    Project mention: The SeL4 Microkernel: An Introduction [pdf] | news.ycombinator.com | 2025-03-23

    Jochen Liedtke became a professor in 1999 in Karlsruhe, sadly he passed away only shortly after in 2001. I don't know if his successor Bellosa still does research on L4. There was the L4Ka project which appears to be completed. In the bachelor lecture on OS by him it's not part of the curriculum.

    Rittinghaus, alumni of Bellosa, is involved with Unikraft [0], which was featured a couple of times on hn, and is using unikernel technology.

    [0] https://unikraft.org/

  12. Collections-C

    A library of generic data structures for the C language.

  13. sc

    Common libraries and data structures for C.

  14. c-ares

    A C library for asynchronous DNS requests

    Project mention: DNS到底怎么运作的 | dev.to | 2024-05-29
  15. sod

    An Embedded Computer Vision & Machine Learning Library (CPU Optimized & IoT Capable)

  16. zlib-ng

    zlib replacement with optimizations for "next generation" systems.

    Project mention: zlib-ng: zlib replacement with optimizations for "next generation" systems | news.ycombinator.com | 2025-03-16
  17. usbmuxd

    A socket daemon to multiplex connections from and to iOS devices

  18. libssh2

    the SSH library

  19. librg

    🚀 Making multi-player gamedev simpler since 2017

  20. libvncserver

    LibVNCServer/LibVNCClient are cross-platform C libraries that allow you to easily implement VNC server or client functionality in your program.

  21. libexpat

    :herb: Fast streaming XML parser written in C99 with >90% test coverage; moved from SourceForge to GitHub

    Project mention: Recursion kills: The story behind CVE-2024-8176 in libexpat | news.ycombinator.com | 2025-03-14
  22. libgphoto2

    The libgphoto2 camera access and control library.

  23. lwrb

    Lightweight generic ring buffer manager library

  24. RGFW

    A cross platform lightweight single-header simple-to-use window abstraction library for creating graphical programs or libraries.

    Project mention: Is it possible to write plain C iOS app in 2025? | news.ycombinator.com | 2025-04-14

    I’ve written a pure C Mac desktop app in 2024 that called the objective-c bindings directly. It is using a modified version of this library https://github.com/ColleagueRiley/RGFW

    While I don’t think that library does iOS specifically, you can have a look at the code to see how you can call objective-c from c. Spoiler: doing so kind of sucks, and also the library code isn’t the most elegant thing I’ve seen.

  25. TurboPFor

    Fastest Integer Compression

  26. SaaSHub

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NOTE: The open source projects on this list are ordered by number of github stars. The number of mentions indicates repo mentiontions in the last 12 Months or since we started tracking (Dec 2020).

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    www.influxdata.com | 24 May 2025
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Index

What are some of the best open-source Library projects in C? This list will help you:

# Project Stars
1 libcurl 37,967
2 FreeRDP 11,741
3 libgit2 9,988
4 libimobiledevice 7,020
5 lwan 5,964
6 cute_headers 4,655
7 Klib 4,387
8 bdwgc 3,224
9 unikraft 3,131
10 Collections-C 2,908
11 sc 2,478
12 c-ares 1,956
13 sod 1,772
14 zlib-ng 1,763
15 usbmuxd 1,560
16 libssh2 1,421
17 librg 1,366
18 libvncserver 1,218
19 libexpat 1,192
20 libgphoto2 1,122
21 lwrb 1,074
22 RGFW 971
23 TurboPFor 803

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Did you know that C is
the 6th most popular programming language
based on number of references?