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Top 23 C Unix Projects
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Link to installing: Ventoy
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Libuv describes itself as a multi-platform support library with a focus on asynchronous I/O. It is widely used in many web servers (e.g., Kestrel) and runtimes such as Node.js and Python (via uvloop). As of Zig 0.14.0, there is no native async I/O, so you must work directly with threads or create your own async API using OS primitives like epoll or kqueue. In many cases, you would likely choose a cross-platform library rather than implementing your own async API. That’s where using libuv, libevent, or libxev (written in Zig) becomes useful.
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As I discussed in my previous devlog, I decided to go with glfw for handling the window creation for this engine. It is a library I used a ton before. And while I do fancy replacing it later, it will suffice for now.
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ravynos
A BSD-based OS project that aims to provide source and binary compatibility with macOS® and a similar user experience.
Project mention: FreeBSD: How Can We Make It More Attractive to New Users? | news.ycombinator.com | 2024-10-12Another angle to look at this is ravynOS, a desktop OS that could attract people interested in MacOS. The project is based on FreeBSD and has lots of customization to provide a familiar desktop experience. While the main site hasn't been updated for a while, the GitHub has a release from this year.
https://ravynos.com/
https://github.com/ravynsoft/ravynos
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shadowsocksr-native
翻墙 从容穿越党国敏感日 ShadowsocksR (SSRoT) native implementation for all platforms, GFW terminator
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I would be shocked if they weren't using a test suite, especially given all the platforms and devices Linux supports. POSIX has a test suite, and there are several Linux test suites [1], [2]. Although, I would think that an architecture port is fairly straightforward. It's reverse-engineering and writing all the device drivers, but devices generally have a well-known interface (and, therefore, presumably tests). The OpenGL drivers are being tested against the official OpenGL test suite.
Of course, there are no guarantees that it runs correctly. Probably doesn't, given that even Apple and Microsoft's software don't run correctly, either. But saying software doesn't run perfectly in all cases is almost tautological.
[1] https://github.com/phoronix-test-suite/phoronix-test-suite
[2] https://github.com/linux-test-project/ltp
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illumos-gate
An open-source Unix operating system -- this is a read-only mirror of the official repository at https://code.illumos.org/plugins/gitiles/illumos-gate
Project mention: When you deleted /lib on Linux while still connected via SSH | news.ycombinator.com | 2025-03-22The Solaris documentation says that this is not allowed:
https://docs.oracle.com/cd/E88353_01/html/E72487/link-8.html
If it ever were allowed, it was a bug. While the VFS is flexible enough to allow for it, the filesystem driver should not to protect itself from leaking orphan subtrees. There is no code in ZFS as far as I know to determine whether there is an orphaned subtree on an unlink and adding it would be very inefficient, as you would need to do a traversal on every unlink while having some way to detect and avoid cycles.
The illumos man page is less clear:
https://illumos.org/man/8/link
However, the ZFS driver makes it very clear that this is not allowed:
https://github.com/illumos/illumos-gate/blob/master/usr/src/...
The comment states that this is disallowed under POSIX.
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My actual "production" implementation of this concept does support that: https://github.com/tavianator/bfs/blob/main/configure
But I wanted the blog post sized version to be simpler for exposition.
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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 | 2025-04-14I’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.
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astroterm
A planetarium for your terminal! Explore stars, planets, constellations, and more, all rendered right in the command line—no telescope required. ✨🪐
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Project mention: Way too many ways to wait on a child process with a timeout | news.ycombinator.com | 2024-11-11
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>So one of the main problems you run into is that your elegant solution only works about 60-80% of the time. The rest of the time, you end up falling back onto near-unmaintainable, horribly inelegant kludges that end up having to exist
This is generally true, though for small compiler backends they have the luxury to straight up refuse to support such use cases. Take QBE and Cranelift for example, the former lacks x87 support [1], the latter doesn't support varargs[2]; which means either of them support the full x86-64 ABI for C99.
[1]https://github.com/michaelforney/cproc?tab=readme-ov-file#wh...
[2]https://github.com/bytecodealliance/wasmtime/issues/1030
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Project mention: The atrocious state of binary compatibility on Linux and how to address it | news.ycombinator.com | 2025-04-01
> GLIBC is an example of a "system library" that cannot be bundled with your application because it includes the dynamic linker itself. This linker is responsible for loading other libraries, some of which may also depend on GLIBC—but not always.
Running WordPerfect on modern Linux is done by shipping both of those components:
https://github.com/taviso/wpunix
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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).
C Unix discussion
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Node.js Event Loop: The Key to Scalable and Efficient Applications
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C stdlib isn't threadsafe and even safe Rust didn't save us
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Index
What are some of the best open-source Unix projects in C? This list will help you:
| # | Project | Stars |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Ventoy | 66,965 |
| 2 | libuv | 25,294 |
| 3 | GLFW | 13,804 |
| 4 | ravynos | 5,812 |
| 5 | fzy | 3,065 |
| 6 | shadowsocksr-native | 2,779 |
| 7 | ltp | 2,416 |
| 8 | Allegro | 1,966 |
| 9 | illumos-gate | 1,727 |
| 10 | 123elf | 1,192 |
| 11 | bfs | 1,061 |
| 12 | RGFW | 971 |
| 13 | winix | 946 |
| 14 | astroterm | 904 |
| 15 | unix | 869 |
| 16 | s6 | 817 |
| 17 | cproc | 770 |
| 18 | tcl | 710 |
| 19 | wpunix | 689 |
| 20 | RHash | 625 |
| 21 | ast | 580 |
| 22 | DragonFlyBSD | 570 |
| 23 | proftpd | 544 |
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