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A curated list of awesome C (or C) frameworks, libraries, resources, and shiny things. Inspired by awesome-... stuff.

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Awesome C Awesome

A curated list of awesome C (or C) frameworks, libraries, resources, and shiny things. Inspired by awesome-... stuff.

Standard Libraries

C Standard Library - including STL Containers, STL Aglorithm, STL Functional, etc.

Frameworks

C generic frameworks and libraries.

  • abseil-cpp - Abseil C Common Libraries. [Apache2]
  • Apache C Standard Library - STDCXX, A collection of algorithms, containers, iterators, and other fundamental components. [retired] [Apache2]
  • APR - Apache Portable Runtime. Another library of cross-platform utility functions. [Apache2]
  • ASL - Adobe Source Libraries provides peer-reviewed and portable C source libraries. [MIT]
  • Boost ⚡ - A large collection of generic C libraries. [Boost] website
  • BDE - The BDE Development Environment from Bloomberg Labs. [Apache2]
  • Cinder - A community-developed, free and open source library for professional-quality creative coding. [BSD]
  • Cxxomfort - A small, header-only library that backports various facilities from more recent C Standards to C 03 and later. [MIT]
  • Dlib ⚡ - A general purpose cross-platform C library designed using contract programming and modern C techniques. [Boost] website
  • EASTL - Electronic Arts Standard Template Library. [BSD]
  • ETL - Embedded Template Library. [MIT]
  • ffead-cpp - Framework for Enterprise Application Development. [Apache2]
  • Folly - An open-source C library developed and used at Facebook. [Apache2]
  • FunctionalPlus - Functional Programming Library for C . Write concise and readable C code. [MIT]
  • GLib - GLib provides the core application building blocks for libraries and applications written in C. [LGPL]
  • JUCE - An all-encompassing C class library for developing cross-platform software. [Core-Module: ISC, Rest: GPL2/GPL3/Commercial] website
  • libPhenom - libPhenom is an eventing framework for building high performance and high scalability systems in C. [Apache2]
  • LibSourcey - C 11 evented IO for real-time video streaming and high performance networking applications. [LGPL]
  • LibU - A multiplatform utility library written in C. [BSD]
  • Loki - A C library of designs, containing flexible implementations of common design patterns and idioms. [MIT]
  • MiLi - Minimal headers-only C Library. [Boost]
  • OpenFrameworks - A cross platform open source toolkit for creative coding in C . [MIT] website
  • Qt ⚡ - A cross-platform application and UI framework. [GPL/LGPL/Commercial]
  • Reason - A cross platform framework designed to bring the ease of use of Java, .Net, or Python to developers who require the performance and strength of C . [GPL2]
  • ROOT - A set of OO frameworks with all the functionality needed to handle and analyze large amounts of data in a very efficient way. Used at CERN. [LGPL]
  • STLport - An exemplary version of STL. [Free]
  • STXXL - Standard Template Library for Extra Large Data Sets. [Boost]
  • tbox - A glib-like multi-platform c library. [Apache2] website
  • Ultimate - A C cross-platform rapid application development framework. [BSD]
  • uSTL - The small STL library. [MIT]
  • Windows Template Library - A C library for developing Windows applications and UI components. [Public]
  • Yomm2 - Fast, Orthogonal, Open multi-methods. Supersedes Yomm11 [Boost]

Artificial Intelligence

  • ANNetGPGPU - A GPU (CUDA) based Artificial Neural Network library. [LGPL]
  • btsk - Game Behavior Tree Starter Kit. [zlib]
  • Evolving Objects - A template-based, ANSI-C evolutionary computation library which helps you to write your own stochastic optimization algorithms insanely fast. [LGPL]
  • frugally-deep - Header-only library for using Keras models in C . [MIT]
  • Genann - Simple neural network library in C. [zlib]
  • MXNet - Lightweight, Portable, Flexible Distributed/Mobile Deep Learning with Dynamic, Mutation-aware Dataflow Dep Scheduler; for Python, R, Julia, Scala, Go, Javascript and more website
  • PyTorch - Tensors and Dynamic neural networks in Python with strong GPU acceleration. website
  • Recast/Detour - (3D) Navigation mesh generator and pathfinder, mostly for games. [zlib]
  • TensorFlow - An open source software library for numerical computation using data flow graphs [Apache]
  • CNTK - Microsoft Cognitive Toolkit (CNTK), an open source deep-learning toolkit. [Boost]
  • tiny-dnn - A header only, dependency-free deep learning framework in C 11. [BSD]
  • Veles - Distributed platform for rapid Deep learning application development. [Apache]
  • Kaldi - Toolkit for speech recognition. [Apache]

Asynchronous Event Loop

  • Asio - A cross-platform C library for network and low-level I/O programming that provides developers with a consistent asynchronous model using a modern C approach. [Boost] website
  • Boost.Asio - A cross-platform C library for network and low-level I/O programming. [Boost]
  • C Actor Framework - An Open Source Implementation of the Actor Model in C . [BSD-3-Clause] website
  • libev - A full-featured and high-performance event loop that is loosely modelled after libevent, but without its limitations and bugs. [BSD and GPL]
  • libevent - An event notification library. [BSD]
  • libuv - Cross-platform asychronous I/O. [BSD]
  • uvw - C wrapper for libuv. [MIT]

Audio

Audio, Sound, Music, Digitized Voice Libraries

  • FMOD - An easy to use crossplatform audio engine and audio content creation tool for games. [Free for non-commercial/Commercial]
  • KFR - Fast, modern C DSP framework, FFT, FIR/IIR filters, Sample Rate Conversion. [GPL/Commercial]
  • libsndfile - C library with C wrapper for reading and writing files containing sampled sound through one standard library interface. [LGPL-2.1] website
  • Maximilian - C Audio and Music DSP Library. [MIT]
  • OpenAL - Open Audio Library - A crossplatform audio API. [BSD/LGPL/Commercial]
  • miniaudio - Single file audio playback and capture library. [Unlicense]
  • Opus - A totally open, royalty-free, highly versatile audio codec. [BSD]
  • PortAudio - PortAudio is a free, cross-platform, open-source, audio I/O library. [MIT]
  • SELA - SimplE Lossless Audio. [MIT]
  • SoLoud - Easy, portable audio engine for games. [zlib]
  • Speex - A free codec for free speech. Obsoleted by Opus. [BSD]
  • Tonic - Easy and efficient audio synthesis in C . [Unlicense]
  • Vorbis - Ogg Vorbis is a fully open, non-proprietary, patent-and-royalty-free, general-purpose compressed audio format. [BSD]
  • minimp3 - Public domain, header-only MP3 decoder with clean-room implementation. [CC0]
  • Wav2Letter - Public domain, a fast open source speech processing toolkit written entirely in C and uses the ArrayFire tensor library and the flashlight machine learning library for maximum efficiency [BSD]

Biology

Bioinformatics, Genomics, Biotech

  • BioC - C Computational Libraries for Bioinformatics. [BSD]
  • Chaste - An open source C library for the computational simulation of mathematical models developed for physiology and biology. [BSD]
  • libsequence - A C library for representing and analyzing population genetics data. [GPL]
  • SeqAn - Algorithms and data structures for the analysis of sequences with the focus on biological data. [BSD/3-clause]
  • Vcflib - A C library for parsing and manipulating VCF files. [MIT]
  • Wham - Structural variants (SVs) in Genomes by directly applying association tests to BAM files. [MIT]

BitTorrent

  • jech/dht - BitTorrent DHT library in C. [MIT]
  • libtorrent (a.k.a. libtorrent-rasterbar) - An efficient feature complete C bittorrent implementation. [BSD]
  • LibTorrent (a.k.a. libtorrent-rakshasa) - BitTorrent library. [GPL]
  • libutp - uTorrent Transport Protocol library. [MIT]

CLI

Console/Terminal User Interface, Command Line Interface

  • Argh! - A minimalist, frustration-free, header-only argument handler. [BSD]
  • Taywee/args - A simple header-only C argument parser library. [MIT]
  • Boost.Program_options - A library to obtain program options via conventional methods such as command line and config file. [Boost]
  • Clara - A simple to use, composable, command line parser for C 11 and beyond. [BSL-1.0]
  • CLI11 - Header only single or multi-file C 11 library for simple and advanced CLI parsing. [BSD]
  • jarro2783/cxxopts - Lightweight C command line option parser. [MIT]
  • docopt.cpp - A library to generate option parser from docstring. [MIT/Boost]
  • gflags - Commandline flags module for C . [BSD]
  • linenoise - A small self-contained alternative to readline and libedit. [BSD-2-Clause]
  • linenoise-ng - A small, portable GNU readline replacement for Linux, Windows and MacOS which is capable of handling UTF-8 characters. [BSD]
  • Ncurses - A terminal user interfaces. [MIT]
  • PDCurses - Public domain curses library with both source code and pre-compiled library available. [PublicDomain]
  • replxx - A readline and libedit replacement that supports UTF-8, syntax highlighting, hints, works on Unix and Windows. [BSD]
  • TCLAP - A mature, stable and feature-rich library for defining and accessing command line arguments in ANSI C . [MIT]
  • termbox - A C library for writing text-based user interfaces. [MIT]

Compression

Compression and Archiving Libraries

  • Brotli - Brotli compression format. Developed by Google. [MIT]
  • bzip2 - A freely available, patent free, high-quality data compressor. [BSD]
  • FiniteStateEntropy - New generation entropy codecs : Finite State Entropy and Huff0.
  • PhysicsFS - A library to provide abstract access to various archives. It is intended for use in video games, and the design was somewhat inspired by Quake 3's file subsystem. [zlib]
  • KArchive - A library for creating, reading, writing and manipulating file archives like zip and tar. It also provides transparent compression and decompression of data, using formats like gzip, via a subclass of QIODevice. [LGPL]
  • libarchive - Multi-format archive and compression library. [New BSD] website
  • LZ4 - Extremely Fast Compression algorithm. [BSD] website
  • LZFSE - LZFSE compression library and command line tool. Developed by Apple.
  • LZHAM - Lossless data compression library with a compression ratio similar to LZMA but with much faster decompression. [BSD]
  • LZMA ⚡ - The default and general compression method of 7z format. [PublicDomain]
  • LZMAT - An extremely fast real-time lossless data compression library. [GPL]
  • miniz - Single C source file Deflate/Inflate compression library with zlib-compatible API, ZIP archive reading/writing, PNG writing. [MIT]
  • Minizip - Zlib with latest bug fixes that supports PKWARE disk spanning, AES encryption, and IO buffering. [zlib]
  • smaz - Small strings compression library. [BSD]
  • Snappy - A fast compressor/decompressor. [BSD]
  • ZLib - A very compact compression library for data streams. [zlib]
  • zlib-ng - zlib for the "next generation" systems. Drop-In replacement with some serious optimizations. [zlib]
  • zstd - Zstandard - Fast real-time compression algorithm. Developed by Facebook. [BSD]
  • ZZIPlib - Provides read access on ZIP-archives. [MPL/LGPL]

Concurrency

Concurrency and Multithreading

  • alpaka - Abstraction library for parallel kernel acceleration. [LGPLv3 ]
  • ArrayFire - A general purpose GPU library. [BSD]
  • Async - A lightweight concurrency framework for C 11, inspired by the Microsoft PPL library and the N3428 C standard proposal. [MIT]
  • Boost.Compute - A C GPU Computing Library for OpenCL. [Boost]
  • Bolt - A C template library optimized for GPUs. [Apache2]
  • ck - Concurrency primitives, safe memory reclamation mechanisms and non-blocking data structures. [BSD]
  • concurrentqueue - A fast multi-producer, multi-consumer lock-free concurrent queue for C 11. [BSD,Boost]
  • Cpp-Taskflow - Fast C Parallel Programming with Task Dependencies. [MIT]
  • CUB - CUB provides state-of-the-art, reusable software components for every layer of the CUDA programming mode. [New BSD]
  • cupla - C API to run CUDA/C on OpenMP, Threads, TBB, ... through Alpaka. [LGPLv3 ]
  • C React - A reactive programming library for C 11. [Boost]
  • FiberTaskingLib - Task-based multi-threading library that supports task graphs with arbitrary dependencies. [Apache]
  • Intel Games Task Scheduler - A task scheduling framework designed for the needs of game developers. [MIT]
  • Intel Parallel STL - Intel® implementation of C 17 STL for C 11 and above. [Apache2]
  • Intel TBB - Intel® Threading Building Blocks. [Apache2]
  • junction - A library of concurrent data structures in C . [BSD]
  • libcds - A C library of Concurrent Data Structures. [BSD]
  • Libclsph - An OpenCL based GPU accelerated SPH fluid simulation library. [MIT]
  • libdill - Introduces structured concurrency in C. [MIT]
  • libdispatch - Grand Central Dispatch (GCD), developed by Apple Inc., is a task parallelism technology based on the thread pool pattern. libdispatch is a library that provides the implementation of GCD's services. [Apache-2.0] website
  • libmill - Introduces Go-style concurrency in C. [MIT]
  • moderngpu - moderngpu is a productivity library for general-purpose computing on GPUs. It is a header-only C library written for CUDA. The unique value of the library is in its accelerated primitives for solving irregularly parallel problems. [FreeBSD & Copyright, Sean Baxter]
  • NCCL - Optimized primitives for collective multi-GPU communication. [BSD]
  • OpenCL - The open standard for parallel programming of heterogeneous systems.
  • OpenMP - The OpenMP API.
  • RaftLib - The RaftLib C library, streaming/dataflow concurrency via C iostream-like operators [Apache2]
  • readerwriterqueue - A fast single-producer, single-consumer lock-free queue for C . [BSD]
  • Thrust - A parallel algorithms library which resembles the C Standard Template Library (STL). [Apache2]
  • transwarp - A header-only C library for task concurrency. [MIT]
  • HPX - A general purpose C runtime system for parallel and distributed applications of any scale. [Boost]
  • VexCL - A C vector expression template library for OpenCL/CUDA. [MIT]
  • Quantum - A powerful C coroutine dispatcher framework built on top of boost::coroutines2.

Containers

  • C B-tree - A template library that implements ordered in-memory containers based on a B-tree data structure. [Apache2]
  • Colony - An unordered "bag"-type container which outperforms std containers in high-modification scenarios while maintaining permanent pointers to non-erased elements regardless of insertion/erasure. [zLib] website
  • Forest - Template library implementing an AVL, a Binary Search, a KD and a Quad Tree. [MIT]
  • Hashmaps - Implementation of open addressing hash table algorithms in C . [MIT]
  • Hopscotch map - A fast header-only hash map which uses hopscotch hashing for collisions resolution. [MIT]
  • LSHBOX - A c toolbox of locality-sensitive hashing (LSH), provides several popular LSH algorithms, also support Python and MATLAB. [GPL]
  • plf::list - A std::list implementation which removes range splicing in order to enable cache-friendlier structure, yielding significant performance gains. [zLib] website
  • plf::stack - A replacement container for the std::stack container adaptor, with better performance than any std container in a stack context. [zLib] website
  • ring_span lite - A simplified implementation of Arthur O'Dwyer's ring_span implementation ie. a circular buffer view. [MIT]
  • sparsepp - A fast, memory efficient hash map for C . [BSD 3-clause]

Cryptography

Cryptography and Encryption Libraries

  • Bcrypt - A cross platform file encryption utility. Encrypted files are portable across all supported operating systems and processors. [BSD]
  • BeeCrypt - A portable and fast cryptography library. [LGPLv2.1 ]
  • Botan - A crypto library for C . [BSD-2]
  • Crypto - A free C class library of cryptographic schemes. [Boost] website
  • digestpp - C 11 header-only message digest (hash) library. [PublicDomain]
  • GnuPG - A complete and free implementation of the OpenPGP standard. [GPL]
  • GnuTLS - A secure communications library implementing the SSL, TLS and DTLS protocols. [LGPL2.1]
  • Libgcrypt - A general purpose cryptographic library originally based on code from GnuPG. [LGPLv2.1 ]
  • libhydrogen - A lightweight, secure, easy-to-use crypto library for constrained environments. [ISC]
  • LibreSSL - A free version of the SSL/TLS protocol forked from OpenSSL in 2014. [?]
  • libsodium - P(ortable|ackageable) NaCl-based crypto library, opinionated and easy to use. [ISC]
  • libhydrogen - A lightweight, secure, easy-to-use crypto library suitable for constrained environments. [ISC]
  • LibTomCrypt - A fairly comprehensive, modular and portable cryptographic toolkit. [WTFPL]
  • mbedTLS - An open source, portable, easy to use, readable and flexible SSL library, previously known as PolarSSL. [Apache2] website
  • Nettle - A low-level cryptographic library. [LGPL]
  • OpenSSL - A robust, commercial-grade, full-featured, and Open Source cryptography library. [Apache] website
  • retter - A collection of hash functions, ciphers, tools, libraries, and materials related to cryptography.
  • s2n - An implementation of the TLS/SSL protocols. [Apache]
  • sha1collisiondetection - Library and command line tool to detect SHA-1 collision in a file. [MIT]
  • Tink - A multi-language, cross-platform library that provides cryptographic APIs that are secure, easy to use correctly, and hard(er) to misuse. [Apache-2.0]
  • Tiny AES in C - Small portable AES128/192/256 in C. [PublicDomain]
  • Themis - crypto library for painless data security, providing symmetric and asymmetric encryption, secure sockets with forward secrecy, for mobile and server platforms. [Apache2]

Database

Database Libraries, SQL Servers, ODBC Drivers, and Tools

  • hiberlite - C Object-relational mapping for sqlite3. [BSD]
  • Hiredis - A minimalistic C client library for the Redis database. [BSD]
  • LevelDB - A fast key-value storage library written at Google that provides an ordered mapping from string keys to string values. [BSD]
  • LMDB - Very fast embedded key/value store with full ACID semantics. [OpenLDAP]
  • LMDB - C 11 wrapper for the LMDB embedded database library. [PublicDomain]
  • MongoDB C Driver - MongoDB client library for C. [Apache2]
  • MongoDB C Driver - C driver for MongoDB. [Apache2]
  • MongoDB Libbson - A BSON utility library. [Apache2]
  • MySQL - A C wrapper for MySQL's C API. [LGPL]
  • nanodbc - A small C wrapper for the native C ODBC API. [MIT]
  • ODB - An open-source, cross-platform, and cross-database object-relational mapping (ORM) system for C . [GPLv2]
  • redis3m - Wrapper of hiredis with clean C interface, supporting sentinel and ready to use patterns. [Apache2]
  • RocksDB - Embedded key-value store for fast storage from facebook. [BSD]
  • SimDB - High performance, shared memory, lock free, cross platform, single file, minimal dependencies, C 11 key-value store [Apache2]
  • SOCI - A database abstraction layer for C . [BSL-1.0]
  • SQLite - A completely embedded, full-featured relational database in a few 100k that you can include right into your project. [PublicDomain]
  • SQLiteC - SQLiteC (SQLiteCpp) is a smart and easy to use C SQLite3 wrapper. [MIT]
  • sqlite_modern_cpp - Header only C 14 wrapper around sqlite library. [MIT]
  • sqlite_orm - SQLite ORM light header only library for modern C . [BSD-3-Clause]
  • sqlpp11 - A type safe embedded domain specific language for SQL queries and results in C . [BSD-2-Clause]
  • TileDB - Fast Dense and Sparse Multidimensional Array DBMS. [MIT] website
  • upscaledb - An embedded "typed" key/value store with a built-in query interface. [GPLv3]

Debug

Debugging Libraries, Memory Leak and Resource Leak Detection, Unit Testing

  • backward-cpp - A beautiful stack trace pretty printer for C . [MIT]
  • benchmark - Google provided small microbenchmark support library. [Apache2]
  • Boost.Test - Boost Test Library. [Boost]
  • check - Check is a unit testing framework for C. [LGPL-2.1] website
  • doctest - The lightest feature rich C single header testing framework. [MIT]
  • Catch - A modern, C -native, header-only, framework for unit-tests, TDD and BDD. [Boost]
  • Catch2 - A modern, C -native, header-only, test framework for unit-tests, TDD and BDD. [BSL-1.0]
  • Celero - C Benchmarking Framework. [Apache2]
  • CppUTest - Unit testing and mocking framework for C/C . [BSD-3-clause]
  • CUTE - C Unit Testing Easier. [LGPL3]
  • CMocka - unit testing framework for C with support for mock objects. [Apache2]
  • CppUnit - C port of JUnit. [LGPL2]
  • CTest - The CMake test driver program. [BSD]
  • Deleaker - A tool for resource leak detection, including memory, GDI and handle leaks.
  • fff - A micro-framework for creating fake C functions. [MIT]
  • Google Mock - A library for writing and using C mock classes. [BSD]
  • Google Test - Google C Testing Framework. [BSD]
  • ig-debugheap - Multiplatform debug heap useful for tracking down memory errors. [BSD]
  • libtap - Write tests in C. [GPL2]
  • MemTrack - Tracking memory allocations in C .
  • microprofile - Profiler with web-view for multiple platforms. [PublicDomain]
  • MinUnit - A minimal unit testing framework for C self-contained in a single header file. [MIT]
  • Mockator - Eclipse CDT plug-in for C Seams and Mock Objects.
  • Nanotimer - A simple low-overhead cross-platform timer class for benchmarking. [zLib] website
  • Nonius - A C micro-benchmarking framework. [CC]
  • Remotery - Single C File Profiler with Web Viewer. [Apache2]
  • UnitTest - A lightweight unit testing framework for C . [MIT/X Consortium license]
  • Unity - Simple Unit Testing for C. [MIT]
  • utest.h - Single header unit testing framework for C and C . [Unlicense]
  • VLD - Visual Leak Detector. A free, robust, open-source memory leak detection system for Visual C .

Game Engine

  • Acid - A high speed C 17 Vulkan game engine. [MIT]
  • Allegro - A cross-platform library mainly aimed for video games and multimedia programming. [zlib]
  • Atomic Game Engine - A multi-platform 2D and 3D engine with a consistent API in C , C#, JavaScript, and TypeScript. [Commercial]
  • Banshee 3D - Modern C 14 game engine with Vulkan support, fully featured editor and C# scripting. [LGPL3/Commercial]
  • Cocos2d-x - A multi-platform framework for building 2d games, interactive books, demos and other graphical applications. [MIT]
  • delta3d - A robust simulation platform. [LGPL2]
  • EnTT - Gaming meets modern C . [MIT]
  • GamePlay - A cross-platform native C game framework for creating 2D/3D mobile and desktop games. [Apache2]
  • Godot - A fully featured, open source, MIT licensed, game engine. [MIT]
  • Grit - Community project to build a free game engine for implementing open world 3D games. [MIT]
  • Halley - A lightweight game engine written in C 14 with a "true" entity-component system. [Apache 2.0]
  • KlayGE - a cross-platform open source game engine with plugin-based architecture. [GPLv2] website
  • OpenXRay - a community-modified X-Ray engine used in S.T.A.L.K.E.R. game series. [Modified BSD/non-commercial only]
  • Oxygine - A cross-platform 2D C game engine. [MIT]
  • Panda3D - A game engine, a framework for 3D rendering and game development for Python and C programs. [Modified BSD] website
  • PixelGameEngine - The official distribution of olcPixelGameEngine, a tool used in javidx9's YouTube videos and projects. [OLC3]
  • Polycode - A cross-platform framework for creative code in C (with Lua bindings). [MIT] website
  • raylib - A simple and easy-to-use library to enjoy videogames programming. [zlib/libpng] website
  • Spring - A powerful free cross-platform RTS game engine. [GPLv2/GPLv3] website
  • Torque2D - An open-source and cross-platform C engine built for 2D game development. [MIT] website
  • Torque3D - An open-source C engine built for 3D game development. [MIT] website
  • toy engine - toy is a thin and modular c game engine and offers simple expressive c idioms to design full featured 2D or 3D games in fast iterations.
  • Urho3D - A free lightweight, cross-platform 2D and 3D game engine implemented in C . Greatly inspired by OGRE and Horde3D. [MIT]

GUI

Graphic User Interface

  • CEGUI - Flexible, cross-platform GUI library.
  • FLTK - Fast, light, cross-platform C GUI toolkit. [GPL2]
  • GacUI - GPU Accelerated C User Interface, with WYSIWYG developing tools, XML supports, built-in data binding and MVVM features. [Ms-PL]
  • GTK - A multi-platform toolkit for creating graphical user interfaces. [LGPL]
  • gtkmm - The official C interface for the popular GUI library GTK . [LGPL]
  • imgui - Immediate Mode Graphical User Interface with minimal dependencies. [MIT]
  • iup - Multi-platform toolkit for building graphical user interfaces. [MIT]
  • libRocket - libRocket is a C HTML/CSS game interface middleware. [MIT]
  • libui - Simple and portable (but not inflexible) GUI library in C that uses the native GUI technologies of each platform it supports. [MIT]
  • MyGUI - Fast, flexible and simple GUI. [MIT]
  • nana - Nana is a cross-platform library for GUI programming in modern C style. [Boost]
  • NanoGui - A minimalistic cross-platform widget library for OpenGL 3.x or higher. [BSD]
  • nuklear - A single-header ANSI C gui library. [PublicDomain]
  • QCustomPlot - Qt plotting widget without further dependencies. [GPLv3]
  • Qwt - Qt Widgets for Technical Applications. [Own based on LGPL]
  • QwtPlot3D - A feature-rich Qt/OpenGL-based C programming library, providing essentially a bunch of 3D-widgets. [zlib]
  • Sciter - Sciter is an embeddable HTML/CSS/scripting engine aimed to be used as an UI layer of modern desktop applications. [Free/Commercial]
  • wxWidgets - A C library that lets developers create applications for Windows, Mac OS X, Linux and other platforms with a single code base. [Own LGPL]
  • Yue - A library for creating native cross-platform GUI apps. [LGPLv2]

Graphics

  • assimp - Open Asset Import Library (assimp) is a cross-platform 3D model import library which aims to provide a common API for different 3D asset file formats. [BSD-3-Clause] website
  • bgfx - A cross-platform rendering library. [BSD]
  • Blend2D - 2D vector graphics engine powered by a JIT compiler. [Zlib] website
  • bs::framework - Modern C 14 library for the development of real-time graphical applications. [MIT]
  • Cairo - A 2D graphics library with support for multiple output devices. [LGPL2 or Mozilla MPL]
  • Diligent Engine - A modern cross-platform low-level 3D graphics library. [Apache2]
  • DirectXTK - A collection of helper classes for writing DirectX 11.x code in C . [MIT]
  • GLFW - A simple, cross-platform OpenGL wrangling library. [zlib/libpng]
  • herebedragons - A basic 3D scene implemented with various engines, frameworks or APIs. [MIT] website
  • Horde3D - A small 3D rendering and animation engine. [EPL]
  • Ion - A small and efficient set of libraries for building cross-platform client or server applications that use 3D graphics. [Apache2] website
  • Irrlicht - A high performance realtime 3D engine written in C . [zlib]
  • libigl - Simple C geometry processing library. [MPL2]
  • magnum - Lightweight and modular C 11/C 14 graphics middleware for games and data visualization. [MIT] website
  • NanoVG - Antialiased 2D vector drawing library on top of OpenGL for UI and visualizations. [Zlib]
  • Ogre 3D ⚡ - A scene-oriented, real-time, flexible 3D rendering engine (as opposed to a game engine) written in C . [MIT]
  • OpenSceneGraph - An open source high performance 3D graphics toolkit. [OSGPL]
  • OpenSubdiv - Pixar's library for evaluating and rendering subdivision surfaces on CPU and GPU. [Modified Apache2]
  • OpenVDB - Library and tools for storing, editing, and rendering volumetric datasets. [MPL2]
  • Panda3D - A framework for 3D rendering and game development for Python and C . [BSD]
  • Partio - Library for wrangling particle data, with support for most common file formats. [Modified BSD]
  • Skia - A complete 2D graphic library for drawing Text, Geometries, and Images. [BSD] webpage
  • TinySpline - A small, yet powerful ANSI C library for interpolating, transforming, and querying arbitrary NURBS, B-Splines, and Bézier curves. [MIT]
  • urho3d - Cross-platform rendering and game engine. [Many different, mostly MIT]
  • Yocto/GL - Tiny C Libraries for Data-Driven Physically-based Graphics. [MIT]

Image Processing

  • Boost.GIL - Generic Image Library.
  • CImg - A small, open source, C toolkit for image processing. [Own LGPL or GPL]
  • CxImage - An image processing and conversion library to load, save, display, transform BMP, JPEG, GIF, PNG, TIFF, MNG, ICO, PCX, TGA, WMF, WBMP, JBG, J2K images. [zlib]
  • Dlib ⚡ - A modern C 11 machine learning, computer vision, numerical optimization, and deep learning toolkit. [Boost] website
  • FreeImage - An open source library that supports popular graphics image formats and others as needed by today's multimedia applications. [GPL2 or GPL3]
  • GD - GD Graphics Library, famously used in PHP for image loading/manipulation & thumbnail generation. [custom permissive license, requires mention in user docs] website
  • DCMTK - DICOM Toolkit.
  • GDCM - Grassroots DICOM library.
  • ITK - An open-source, cross-platform system for image analysis. [Apache2 from ITK 4.0]
  • libfacedetection - Open source library for face detection in images. The face detection speed can reach 1500FPS. [BSD]
  • libjpeg-turbo - A JPEG image codec that uses SIMD instructions to accelerate baseline JPEG encoding and decoding. [IJG & BSD-3-Clause & zlib] website
  • libvips - A fast image processing library with low memory needs. [LGPL] website
  • Magick - ImageMagick program interfaces for C . [Apache2]
  • MagickWnd - ImageMagick program interfaces for C. [Apache2]
  • OpenCV ⚡ - Open source computer vision. [BSD]
  • OpenEXR - Cross-platform library for high dynamic range imaging. [Modified BSDF]
  • OpenImageIO - Powerful image and texture wrangling library with support for a wide number of common lossy and RAW formats. [Modified BSD]
  • Simd - C image processing library with using of SIMD: SSE, SSE2, SSE3, SSSE3, SSE4.1, SSE4.2, AVX, AVX2, AVX-512, VMX(Altivec) and VSX(Power7), NEON for ARM. [MIT]
  • stb-image - STB single-header image loading library. [Public Domain]
  • tesseract-ocr - An OCR engine. [Apache2]
  • TinyEXIF - Tiny ISO-compliant C EXIF and XMP parsing library for JPEG. [MIT]
  • Video - A C 14 high performance video and image processing library. [MIT]
  • VIGRA - A generic C computer vision library for image analysis. [MIT X11]
  • VTK - Open-source, freely available software system for 3D computer graphics, image processing and visualization. [BSD]

Internationalization

  • gettext - GNU 'gettext'. [GPL2]
  • IBM ICU - A set of C/C and Java libraries providing Unicode and Globalization support. [ICU]
  • libiconv - An encoding conversion library between different character encodings. [GPL]
  • utf8.h - Single header utf8 string functions for C and C . [Unlicense]

Inter-process communication

  • Apache Thrift - Efficient cross-language IPC/RPC, works between C , Java, Python, PHP, C#, and many more other languages. Originally developed by Facebook. [Apache2]
  • Cap'n Proto - Fast data interchange format and capability-based RPC system. [MIT]
  • gRPC - A high performance, open source, general-purpose RPC framework. [BSD] website
  • Ice - Comprehensive RPC framework with support for C , C#, Java, JavaScript, Python and more. [GPLv2]
  • libjson-rpc-cpp - JSON-RPC framework for C servers and clients. [MIT]
  • nanomsg - A simple high-performance implementation of several "scalability protocols". [MIT] website
  • nng - nanomsg-next-generation, a light-weight brokerless messaging library. [MIT] website
  • rpclib - A modern C msgpack-RPC server and client library. [MIT]
  • simple-rpc-cpp - A simple RPC wrapper generator to C/C functions. [BSD]
  • WAMP - Provides RPC and pub/sub messaging patterns. (various implementations, various languages)
  • xmlrpc-c - A lightweight RPC library based on XML and HTTP. [BSD]

JSON

  • Boost.PropertyTree - A property tree parser/generator that can be used to parse XML/JSON/INI/Info files. [Boost]
  • frozen - JSON parser and generator for C/C . [GPL & GPL2]
  • Jansson - C library for encoding, decoding and manipulating JSON data. [MIT]
  • jbson - jbson is a library for building & iterating BSON data, and JSON documents in C 14. [Boost]
  • JeayeSON - A very sane (header only) C JSON library. [BSD]
  • Jsmn - A minimalistic JSON parser in C. [MIT]
  • json ⚡ - JSON for Modern C . [MIT]
  • JSON - A JSON parser in C . [MIT]
  • json.h - A simple one header/one source solution to parsing JSON in C and C . [Unlicense]
  • json-c - A JSON implementation in C. [MIT]
  • JsonCpp - A C library for interacting with JSON. [MIT]
  • json-parser - Very low footprint JSON parser written in portable ANSI C. [BSD]
  • json11 - A tiny JSON library for C 11. [MIT]
  • json-voorhees - JSON library for C . Support for C 11. No dependencies, fast and dev-friendly. [Apache2]
  • jute - Very simple C JSON Parser. [PublicDomain]
  • libjson - A JSON parser and printer library in C. easy to integrate with any model. [LGPL]
  • libjson - Lightweight JSON library. [?]
  • LIBUCL ⚡ - Universal configuration library parser [BSD-2-Clause]
  • PicoJSON - A header-file-only, JSON parser serializer in C . [BSD]
  • qt-json - A simple class for parsing JSON data into a QVariant hierarchy and vice versa. [GPLv3]
  • QJson - A qt-based library that maps JSON data to QVariant objects. [LGPL2]
  • RapidJSON ⚡ - A fast JSON parser/generator for C with both SAX/DOM style API. [MIT]
  • sajson - Lightweight, extremely high-performance JSON parser for C 11. [MIT]
  • ujson - µjson is a a small, C 11, UTF-8, JSON library. [MIT]
  • YAJL - A fast streaming JSON parsing library in C. [ISC]

Logging

  • Blackhole - Attribute-based logging framework, which is designed to be fast, modular and highly customizable. [MIT]
  • Boost.Log - Designed to be very modular and extensible. [Boost]
  • Easylogging - Single header only, extremely light-weight high performance logging library for C 11 (or higher) applications. [MIT] website
  • G3log - Asynchronous logger with Dynamic Sinks. [PublicDomain]
  • glog - C implementation of the Google logging module.
  • Log4cpp - A library of C classes for flexible logging to files, syslog, IDSA and other destinations. [LGPL]
  • log4cplus - A simple to use C logging API providing thread-safe, flexible, and arbitrarily granular control over log management and configuration. [BSD & Apache2]
  • loguru - A lightweight C logging library. [PublicDomain]
  • plog - Portable and simple log for C in less than 1000 lines of code. [MPL2]
  • reckless - Low-latency, high-throughput, asynchronous logging library for C . [MIT]
  • spdlog - Super fast, header only, C logging library.
  • templog - A very small and lightweight C library which you can use to add logging to your C applications. [Boost]
  • P7Baical - An open source and cross-platform library for high-speed sending telemetry & trace data with minimal usage of CPU and memory. [LGPL]

Machine Learning

  • Caffe - A fast framework for neural networks. [BSD]
  • CCV - C-based/Cached/Core Computer Vision Library, A Modern Computer Vision Library. [BSD]
  • Dlib ⚡ - A modern C 11 machine learning, computer vision, numerical optimization, and deep learning toolkit. [Boost] website
  • Fido - A highly-modular C machine learning library for embedded electronics and robotics. [MIT] website
  • flashlight - A fast, flexible machine learning library from Facebook AI Research written entirely in C and based on the ArrayFire tensor library. [BSD-3-Clause] website
  • MeTA - A modern C data sciences toolkit. [MIT] website
  • Minerva - A fast and flexible system for deep learning. [Apache2]
  • mlpack - A scalable c machine learning library. [LGPLv3] website
  • OpenCV ⚡ - Open Source Computer Vision Library. [BSD] website
  • Recommender - C library for product recommendations/suggestions using collaborative filtering (CF). [BSD]
  • RNNLIB - RNNLIB is a recurrent neural network library for sequence learning problems. [GPLv3]
  • SHOGUN - The Shogun Machine Learning Toolbox. [GPLv3]
  • sofia-ml - The suite of fast incremental algorithms for machine learning. [Apache2]
  • VLFeat - The VLFeat open source library implements popular computer vision algorithms specialising in image understanding and local featurexs extraction and matching. [BSD-2-Clause] website
  • xgboost - Scalable, Portable and Distributed Gradient Boosting (GBDT, GBRT or GBM) Library, for Python, R, Java, Scala, C and more. Runs on single machine, Hadoop, Spark, Flink and DataFlow. [Apache2]

Math

  • Apophenia - A C library for statistical and scientific computing [GPL2]
  • Armadillo - Fast C library for linear algebra & scientific computing. [Apache2] website
  • blaze - high-performance C math library for dense and sparse arithmetic. [BSD]
  • Boost.Multiprecision - provides higher-range/precision integer, rational and floating-point types in C , header-only or with GMP/MPFR/LibTomMath backends. [Boost]
  • ceres-solver - C library for modeling and solving large complicated nonlinear least squares problems from google. [BSD]
  • CGAL - Collection of efficient and reliable geometric algorithms. [LGPL&GPL] website
  • cml - free C math library for games and graphics. [Boost]
  • Dlib ⚡ - A modern C 11 machine learning, computer vision, numerical optimization, and deep learning toolkit. [Boost] website
  • Eigen - A high-level C library of template headers for linear algebra, matrix and vector operations, numerical solvers and related algorithms. [MPL2]
  • ExprTK - The C Mathematical Expression Toolkit Library (ExprTk) is a simple to use, easy to integrate and extremely efficient run-time mathematical expression parser and evaluation engine. [MIT]
  • Geometric Tools - C library for computing in the fields of mathematics, graphics, image analysis and physics. [Boost] website
  • GLM - Header-only C math library that matches and inter-operates with OpenGL's GLSL math. [MIT]
  • GMTL - Graphics Math Template Library is a collection of tools implementing Graphics primitives in generalized ways. [GPL2]
  • GMP - A C library for arbitrary precision arithmetic, operating on signed integers, rational numbers, and floating-point numbers. [LGPL3 & GPL2]
  • MIRACL - A Multiprecision Integer and Rational Arithmetic Cryptographic Library. [AGPL]
  • muparser - muParser is an extensible high performance math expression parser library written in C . [MIT]
  • NT2 - A SIMD-optimized numerical template library that provides an interface with MATLAB-like syntax. [Boost]
  • LibTomMath - A free open source portable number theoretic multiple-precision integer library written entirely in C. [PublicDomain & WTFPL] website
  • linmath.h - A lean linear math library, aimed at graphics programming. [WTFPL]
  • lp_solve - A library used to formulate and solve linear programming problems. [LGPL] website
  • OpenBLAS - An optimized BLAS library based on GotoBLAS2 1.13 BSD version. [BSD 3-clause] website
  • QuantLib - A free/open-source library for quantitative finance. [Modified BSD] website
  • StatsLib - A C header-only library of statistical distribution functions. [Apache2] website
  • SymEngine - Fast symbolic manipulation library, a rewriting of SymPy's core in C . [MIT]
  • TinyExpr - A C library for parsing and evaluating math expressions from strings. [zlib]
  • Vc - SIMD Vector Classes for C . [BSD]
  • Versor - A (fast) Generic C library for Geometric Algebras, including Euclidean, Projective, Conformal, Spacetime (etc).
  • Wykobi - A C library of efficient, robust and simple to use C 2D/3D oriented computational geometry routines. [MIT]
  • xtensor - A C 14 library for numerical analysis with multi-dimensional array expressions, inspired by NumPy syntax. [BSD 3-clause] website
  • universal - A C 14 header-only library implementing arbitrary posit arithmetic. The posit number system is a tapered floating point that is more efficient than IEEE floating point. Posits enable reproducible computational science. [MIT license] website

Memory Allocation

  • Boehm GC - Conservative garbage collector for C and C . [similar to X11] website
  • Hoard - Fast, Scalable, and Memory-efficient Malloc for Linux, Windows, and Mac. [GPL, commercial] website
  • jemalloc - General purpose malloc(3) implementation that emphasizes fragmentation avoidance and scalable concurrency support. [BSD] website
  • memory - STL compatible C memory allocator library. [ZLib]
  • memory-allocators - Custom memory allocators to improve the performance of dynamic memory allocation. [MIT]

Multimedia

  • GStreamer - A library for constructing graphs of media-handling components. [LGPL]
  • libass - Portable subtitle renderer for the ASS/SSA subtitle format. [ISC]
  • libav - A collection of libraries and tools to process multimedia content such as audio, video, subtitles and related metadata. [LGPL v2.1 and others] website
  • LIVE555 Streaming Media - Multimedia streaming library using open standard protocols (RTP/RTCP, RTSP, SIP). [LGPL]
  • libVLC - libVLC (VLC SDK) media framework. [GPL]
  • MediaInfoLib - Convenient unified display of the most relevant technical and tag data for video and audio files. [BSD]
  • QtAv - A multimedia playback framework based on Qt and FFmpeg to write a player easily. [LGPL] website
  • SDL ⚡ - Simple DirectMedia Layer. [zlib]
  • SFML ⚡ - Simple and Fast Multimedia Library. [zlib] website
  • TagLib - A library for reading and editing the metadata of several popular audio formats. [LGPL/MPL] website

Networking

  • ACE - An OO Network Programming Toolkit in C . [?MIT?]
  • Boost.Asio ⚡ - A cross-platform C library for network and low-level I/O programming. [Boost]
  • Boost.Beast ⚡ - HTTP and WebSocket built on Boost.Asio in C 11. [BSL-1.0] website
  • Breep - Event based, high-level C 14 peer-to-peer library. [EUPL-1.1 (OSI approved)]
  • C REST SDK - C REST SDK (previously named Casablanca). [Apache2]
  • Restbed - C 11 Asynchronous RESTful framework. [AGPL]
  • Restinio - A header-only C 14 library that gives you an embedded HTTP/Websocket server. [BSD]
  • c-ares - A C library for asynchronous DNS requests. [MIT]
  • cpp-httplib - A single file C 11 header-only HTTP/HTTPS sever library. [MIT]
  • cpp-netlib - A collection of open-source libraries for high level network programming. [Boost]
  • cpp-netlib/uri - URI parser/builder library for C , compatible with RFC 3986 and RFC 3987. [BSL-1.0]
  • cpr - A modern C HTTP requests library with a simple but powerful interface. Modeled after the Python Requests module. [MIT] website
  • curlcpp - An object oriented C wrapper for CURL(libcurl). [MIT]
  • Dyad.c - Asynchronous networking for C. [MIT]
  • ENet - Reliable UDP networking library. [MIT] website
  • evpp - C high performance networking with TCP/UDP/HTTP protocols. [BSD]
  • H2O - An optimized HTTP server with support for HTTP/1.x and HTTP/2. It can also be used as a library. [MIT]
  • HTTP Parser ⚡ - A http request/response parser for C. [MIT]
  • libcurl - Multiprotocol file transfer library. [MIT/X derivate license]
  • libjingle - Google talk voice and P2P interoperability library. [BSD]
  • Libmicrohttpd - GNU libmicrohttpd is a small C library that is supposed to make it easy to run an HTTP server as part of another application. [LGPL v2.1 ]
  • libpcap - A portable C/C library for network traffic capture. [BSD] website
  • libquic - A QUIC protocol library extracted from Chromium's QUIC Implementation. [BSD]
  • librdkafka - Apache Kafka client library for C and C . [BSD-2-Clause]
  • libwebsockets - A lightweight pure C WebSocket implementation that provides both client and server libraries. [LGPL2.1 static link exception] website
  • Mongoose - Extremely lightweight webserver. [GPL2]
  • MQTT-C - A portable MQTT C client for embedded systems and PCs alike. [MIT] website
  • Muduo - A C non-blocking network library for multi-threaded server in Linux. [BSD]
  • nghttp2 - HTTP/2 C Library. [MIT] website
  • Onion - HTTP server library in C designed to be lightweight and easy to use. [Apache2/GPL2]
  • PicoHTTPParser - A tiny, primitive, fast HTTP request/response parser. [MIT]
  • POCO ⚡ - C class libraries and frameworks for building network- and internet-based applications that run on desktop, server, mobile and embedded systems. [Boost] website
  • Proxygen - Facebook's collection of C HTTP libraries including an easy to use HTTP server. [BSD]
  • RakNet - A cross platform, open source, C networking engine for game programmers. [BSD]
  • restclient-cpp - Simple REST client for C . It wraps libcurl for HTTP requests. [MIT]
  • Seasocks - Simple, small, C embeddable webserver with WebSockets support. [BSD]
  • Silicon - A high performance, middleware oriented C 14 http web framework. [MIT]
  • Tufão - An asynchronous web framework for C built on top of Qt. [LGPL2]
  • uriparser - Strictly RFC 3986 compliant URI parsing and handling library. [BSD-3-Clause]
  • uWebSockets - µWS is one of the most lightweight, efficient & scalable WebSocket & HTTP server implementations available. [Zlib]
  • WAFer - A C language-based ultra-light software platform for scalable server-side and networking applications. Think node.js for C programmers. [GPL2]
  • Wangle - A client/server application framework to build asynchronous, event-driven modern C services. [Apache-2.0]
  • wdt - An embeddedable library (and command line tool) aiming to transfer data between 2 systems as fast as possible over multiple TCP paths. [BSD-3-Clause]
  • WebSocket - C /Boost Asio based websocket client/server library. [BSD]
  • PcapPlusPlus - a multiplatform C network sniffing and packet parsing and crafting framework. [Unlicense]
  • ZeroMQ - High-speed, modular asynchronous communication library. [LGPL] website

PDF

Libraries for parsing and manipulating PDF documents.

  • libharu - A free, cross platform, open-sourced software library for generating PDF. [zlib]
  • MuPDF - A lightweight PDF, XPS, and E-book viewer. [AGPL/Commercial]
  • PoDoFo - A library to work with the PDF file format. [LGPL]
  • Poppler - Open-source multi-backend PDF rendering library based on the xpdf-3.0 code base. [GPLv2/GPLv3]
  • Xpdf - Xpdf is a free PDF viewer and toolkit, including a text extractor, image converter, HTML converter, and more. [GPL v2/GPL v3]
  • DynaPDF - An easy-to-use PDF generation library. [Commercial]

Physics

Dynamics simulation engines

  • Box2D - A 2D physics engine for games. [BSD-like]
  • Bullet - A 3D physics engine for games. [zlib] website
  • Chipmunk - A fast and lightweight 2D game physics library. [MIT] website
  • LiquidFun - A 2D physics engine for games. [BSD-like]
  • Newton Dynamics - An integrated solution for real time simulation of physics environments. [zlib]
  • ODE - Open Dynamics Engine - An open source, high performance library for simulating rigid body dynamics. [BSD&LGPL]
  • ofxBox2d - openFrameworks wrapper for Box2D. [BSD-like]
  • PhysX - An open-source realtime physics engine middleware SDK developed by Nvidia as a part of Nvidia GameWorks software suite. [BSD-3-Clause]
  • Project Chrono - An open source multi-physics simulation engine. [BSD-3-Clause] website
  • Simbody - High-performance C multibody dynamics/physics library for simulating articulated biomechanical and mechanical systems like vehicles, robots, and the human skeleton. [Apache2]

Reflection

  • Better Enums - Reflective enums (to string, iteration). Single header. [BSD] website
  • clReflect - C Reflection using clang. [MIT]
  • CPFG - A C 03 library for reflection, callback and script binding. [Apache2] website
  • CPP-Reflection - C Reflection using clang. [MIT]
  • Magic Enum - Header-only C 17 library provides static reflection for enums (to string, from string, iteration), work with any enum type without any macro or boilerplate code. [MIT]
  • meta - Header-only, non-intrusive and macro-free runtime reflection system in C . [MIT]
  • Nameof - Header-only C 17 library provides nameof macros and functions to obtain the simple name of variable, type, function, macro, and enum. [MIT]
  • Ponder - A C 11 library for reflection. [MIT]
  • RTTR - A C 11 library for reflection. [MIT] website

Regular Expression

  • CppVerbalExpressions - C regular expressions made easy. [MIT]
  • CTRE - A Compile time PCRE (almost) compatible regular expression matcher. [MIT]
  • Hyperscan - Hyperscan is a high-performance multiple regex matching library by Intel. Provides simultaneous matching of large numbers of regexps (up to tens of thousands). Typically used in a DPI library stack. [BSD]
  • Oniguruma - A modern and flexible regular expressions library that supports a variety of character encodings. [BSD]
  • PCRE - A regular expression C library inspired by the regular expression capabilities in Perl. [BSD]
  • PIRE - Perl Incompatible Regular Expressions library by Yandex. Can be really fast (more than 400 MB/s). [LPGL v3.0]
  • RE2 - A software library for regular expressions via a finite-state machine using automata theory. [BSD-3-Clause]
  • SLRE - Super Light Regexp engine for C/C . [GPLv2/Commercial]
  • sregex - A non-backtracking NFA/DFA-based Perl-compatible regex engine library for matching on large data streams. [BSD]

Robotics

  • MOOS-IvP - A set of open source C modules for providing autonomy on robotic platforms, in particular autonomous marine vehicles.
  • MRPT - Mobile Robot Programming Toolkit. [BSD]
  • PCL - Point Cloud Library is a standalone, large scale, open project for 2D/3D image and point cloud processing [BSD] website
  • Robotics Library (RL) - A self-contained C library for robot kinematics, motion planning and control. [BSD]
  • RobWork - A collection of C libraries for simulation and control of robot systems. [Apache2]
  • ROS - Robot Operating System provides libraries and tools to help software developers create robot applications. [BSD]

Scientific Computing

  • AMGCL - a header-only C library for solving large sparse linear systems with algebraic multigrid. [MIT]
  • FFTW - A C library for computing the DFT in one or more dimensions. [GPL]
  • GSL - GNU scientific library. [GPL]
  • TileDB - Fast Dense and Sparse Multidimensional Array DBMS. [MIT] website
  • Trilinos - High performance PDE solvers. [BSD]
  • Torch - A scientific computing framework with wide support for machine learning algorithms that puts GPUs first. [BSD-3-Clause] website

Scripting

  • AngelScript - AngelScript is a game-oriented interpreted/compiled scripting language. [zlib]
  • Boost.Python - A C library which enables seamless interoperability between C and the Python programming language. [Boost]
  • cppimport - Import C files directly from Python! [MIT]
  • CppSharp - Tools and libraries to glue C/C APIs to high-level languages. [MIT]
  • ChaiScript - An easy to use embedded scripting language for C . [BSD] website
  • ctypes.sh - A foreign function interface for bash. [MIT]
  • Cython - Cython is an optimising static compiler for both the Python programming language and the extended Cython programming language (based on Pyrex). It makes writing C extensions for Python as easy as Python itself. [Apache] website
  • djinni - A tool for generating cross-language type declarations and interface bindings. [Apache2]
  • Duktape - An embeddable Javascript engine with compact footprint. [MIT] website
  • JavaCpp - The missing bridge between Java and native C . [Apache2]
  • libffi - A portable foreign-function interface library. [MIT] website
  • Lua - A minimal and fast scripting engine for configuration files and basic application scripting. [MIT]
  • LuaBridge - A lightweight, dependency-free library for binding Lua to C . [MIT]
  • luacxx - C 11 API for creating Lua bindings. [MIT]
  • nbind - Magical headers that make your C library accessible from JavaScript. [MIT]
  • PHP-CPP - A library to build PHP extensions with C . [Apache2] website
  • pybind11 - Seamless operability between C 11 and Python. [BSD]
  • SIP - C or C Bindings Generator for Python v2 and v3. [GPL]
  • sol2 - A C <-> Lua API wrapper with advanced features and top notch performance. [MIT]
  • SWIG - A wrapper/interface Generator that let you link your c code to Javascript, Perl, PHP, Python, Tcl and Ruby. [GPL/Output not licensed] website
  • V7 - An embedded JavaScript engine. [GPL2]
  • V8 - A fast JavaScript engine by Google that can be embedded into any C application. [BSD]
  • ChakraCore -A JavaScript engine by Microsoft that can be embedded into nodejs. [MIT]

Serialization

  • Bond - An open source, cross-platform framework for working with schematized data. [MIT]
  • cereal - A C 11 library for serialization. [BSD]
  • cppcodec - Header-only C 11 library to encode/decode base64, base32 and hex with consistent, flexible API. [MIT]
  • FlatBuffers - A Memory efficient serialization library. [Apache2]
  • MessagePack - Efficient binary serialization format "like JSON" for C and C . [Apache2] website
  • nanopb - Small code-size Protocol Buffers implementation in ANSI C. [Zlib]
  • protobuf - Protocol Buffers - Google's data interchange format. [BSD]
  • protobuf-c - Protocol Buffers implementation in C. [BSD]
  • SimpleBinaryEncoding - encoding and decoding application messages in binary format for low-latency applications. [Apache2]
  • upb - A small protobuf implementation in C. [BSD]
  • YAS - Very fast Yet Another Serialization library supports the binary/text/json formats. [Boost]

Sorting

  • pdqsort - Pattern-defeating quicksort. [zlib]
  • Timsort - A templated stable sorting function which outperforms quicksort-based algorithms including std::sort, for reversed or semi-sorted data. [MIT]

Video

  • libvpx - VP8/VP9 Codec SDK. [BSD]
  • FFmpeg - A complete, cross-platform solution to record, convert and stream audio and video. [LGPL2/GPL2]
  • libde265 - Open h.265 video codec implementation. [LGPL] website
  • x265 - Open h.265 video codec implementation. [GPL2] website
  • OpenH264 - Open Source H.264 Codec. [BSD] website
  • Theora - A free and open video compression format. [BSD]
  • Vireo - A lightweight and versatile video processing library by Twitter. [MIT]

Virtual Machines

  • CarpVM - "interesting" VM in C. Let's see how this goes. [GPLv3]
  • MicroPython - Aims to put an implementation of Python 3.x on a microcontroller. [MIT]
  • TinyVM - A small, fast, lightweight virtual machine written in pure ANSI C. [MIT]

Web Application Framework

  • Civetweb - Provides easy to use, powerful, C/C embeddable web server with optional CGI, SSL and Lua support. [MIT]
  • CppCMS - A Free High Performance Web Development Framework (not a CMS). [LGPLv3]
  • Crow - Crow is C micro web framework (inspired by Python Flask). [BSD]
  • Cutelyst - A C Web Framework built on top of Qt, using the simple approach of Catalyst (Perl) framework. [LGPLv2.1 ] website
  • facil.io - Evented, high performance C web framework supporting HTTP, WebSockets, SSE and more. [MIT] website
  • Kore - ultra fast and flexible web server / framework for web applications developed in C. [ISC]
  • libOnion - lightweight library to help you create webservers in C programming language. [LGPLv3]
  • lwan - Experimental, scalable, high performance HTTP server. [GPL2]
  • oat - Light, zero-dependency framework to create high-performance web-services. [Apache-2.0] website
  • Pistache - Pistache is a C REST framework written in pure C 11 with no external dependency. [Apache2]
  • QDjango - A web framework written in C and built on top of the Qt library. Where possible it tries to follow django's API, hence its name. [LGPL]
  • TreeFrog Framework - High-speed and full-stack web application framework based on C and Qt, which supports HTTP and WebSocket protocol (with O/R mapping). [BSD] website
  • Wt - A C library for developing web applications. [GPL/Commercial]

XML

XML is crap. Really. There are no excuses. XML is nasty to parse for humans, and it's a disaster to parse even for computers. There's just no reason for that horrible crap to exist. - Linus Torvalds

  • Boost.PropertyTree - A property tree parser/generator that can be used to parse XML/JSON/INI/Info files. [Boost]
  • Expat - An XML parser library written in C. [MIT]
  • Libxml2 - The XML C parser and toolkit of Gnome. [MIT]
  • libxml - An XML Parser for C . [LGPL2]
  • Mini-XML - A small XML parsing library written in ANSI C. [LGPL2 with exceptions]
  • PugiXML - A light-weight, simple and fast XML parser for C with XPath support. [MIT]
  • RapidXml - An attempt to create the fastest XML parser possible, while retaining useability, portability and reasonable W3C compatibility. [Boost]
  • TinyXML - A simple, small, minimal, C XML parser that can be easily integrating into other programs. [zlib]
  • TinyXML2 - A simple, small, efficient, C XML parser that can be easily integrating into other programs. [zlib]
  • TinyXML - A completely new interface to TinyXML that uses MANY of the C strengths. Templates, exceptions, and much better error handling. [MIT]
  • Xerces-C - A validating XML parser written in a portable subset of C . [Apache2]

Miscellaneous

Useful libraries or tools that don't fit in the categories above or maybe just not categorised yet

  • access_profiler - A tool to count accesses to member variables in c programs. [GPL3]
  • American fuzzy lop a.k.a. afl-fuzz - Crazy fuzzing tool that automatically discovers bugs given time and minimal example input. [Apache2]
  • Better String - An alternative to the string library for C which is more functional and does not have buffer overflow overrun problems. Also includes a C wrapper. [BSD, GPL2]
  • Boost.Signals - An implementation of a managed signals and slots system. [Boost]
  • CPPItertools - Range-based for loop add-ons inspired by the Python builtins and itertools library. [BSD-2-Clause]
  • DynaMix - A library which allows you to compose and modify objects at run time. [MIT]
  • {fmt} ⚡ - Small, safe and fast formatting library for C . [Simplified BSD]
  • FastFormat - Fast, Safe C Formatting inspired by log4j and Pantheios [Simplified BSD]
  • casacore - A set of c core libraries derived from aips . [LGPL]
  • QtVerbalExpressions - This Qt lib is based off of the C VerbalExpressions library. [MIT]
  • c-smart-pointers - Smart pointers for the (GNU) C programming language. [MIT]
  • cxx-prettyprint - A pretty printing library for C containers. [Boost]
  • icecream-cpp - A small printing library for debugging purposes. [MIT]
  • gcc-poison - A simple header file for developers to ban unsafe C/C functions from applications.
  • Kangaru - A dependency injection container for C 11 and C 14. [MIT]
  • Klib - Small and lightweight implementations of common algorithms and data structures. [MIT]
  • libsigc - A typesafe callback system for standard C . [LGPL]
  • libcpuid - A small C library for x86 CPU detection and feature extraction. [BSD]
  • libevil - The Evil License Manager. [GPLv3]
  • libnih - A lightweight library of C functions and structures. [GPL2.1]
  • libusb - A universal USB library which allows for portable access to USB devices. [LGPL2]
  • Mach7 - A Pattern-matching library for C . [BSD]
  • mio - Cross-platform C 11 header-only library for memory mapped file IO. [MIT]
  • PEGTL - The Parsing Expression Grammar Template Library, a C 11 parser library. [MIT]
  • Remote Call Framework - Inter-process communication framework for C . [GPL2/Commercial]
  • Scintilla - A free source code editing component. [MIT]
  • SDS - Simple Dynamic Strings library for C. [BSD]
  • semver.c - A semver parser and render in ANSI C. [MIT]
  • Serial Communication Library - Cross-platform, Serial Port library written in C . [MIT]
  • sigslot - C Signal/Slot Library. [PublicDomain]
  • SimpleSignal - High performance C 11 signals. [PublicDomain]
  • Stage - Mobile robot simulator. [GPL2]
  • stdman Formatted C 11/14 stdlib man pages (from cppreference). [MIT]
  • stb ⚡ - A range of single-file libraries for C/C . [PublicDomain]
  • StrTk - A C library consisting of high performance string processing routines. [MIT]
  • Tulip Indicators - A C library of over 100 financial technical analysis indicators. [LGPL]
  • ub-canaries - A collection of C/C programs that try to get compilers to exploit undefined behavior.
  • value-category-cheatsheet A PDF cheatsheet for lvalues, rvalues, and the like. [Jank copyleft]
  • VarTypes - A feature-rich, object-oriented framework for managing variables in C / Qt4. [LGPL]
  • ZBar - A barcode scanner library, which allows to scan photos/images/video streams for barcodes and return their value. [LGPL2]
  • ZXing - An open-source, multi-format 1D/2D barcode image processing library implemented in Java, with ports to other languages. [Apache]

Software

Software for creating a development environment.

Compiler

List of C or C compilers

  • 8cc - A Small C Compiler.
  • c - Compile and execute C "scripts" in one go! [MIT]
  • Clang - A C compiler for LLVM. Supports C 11/14/1z C11. Developed by LLVM Team. [NCSA]
  • GCC - GNU Compiler Collection. Supports C 11/14/1z C11 and OpenMP. [GNU GPL3]
  • PCC - A very old C compiler. Supports C99.
  • Intel C Compiler - Developed by Intel.
  • LLVM - Collection of modular and reusable compiler and toolchain technologies.
  • Microsoft Visual C - MSVC, developed by Microsoft.
  • Open WatCom - Watcom C, C , and Fortran cross compilers and tools. [Sybase Open Watcom Public License]
  • Oracle Solaris Studio - C, C and Fortran compiler for SPARC and x86. Supports C 11. Available on Linux and Solaris. [OTN Developer License]
  • TCC - Tiny C Compiler. [LGPL]

Online Compiler

List of online C or C compilers

  • codepad - An online compiler/interpreter, and a simple collaboration tool.
  • coliru - Online compiler/shell with support for various C compilers.
  • Compiler Explorer - An interactive compiler with assembly output available.
  • CompileOnline - Compile and Execute C online on Linux.
  • Ideone - An online compiler and debugging tool which allows you to compile source code and execute it online in more than 60 programming languages.
  • repl.it - A powerful yet simple tools and platforms for educators, learners, and developers.
  • Rextester - Online compiler which provides several compilers(Clang, GCC, MSVC) and several editors.
  • Rise4Fun - Online Visual C compiler.
  • Try It Online - TIO is a family of online interpreters for an evergrowing list of practical and recreational programming languages.
  • Wandbox - An online Clang/GCC compiler with Boost available.

Debugger

List of C or C debuggers

  • Comparison of debuggers - A list of Debuggers from Wikipedia.
  • GDB - GNU Debugger.
  • LLDB - The LLDB Debugger.
  • Metashell - An interactive template metaprogramming shell which includes the MDB metadebugger.
  • Valgrind - A tool for memory debugging, memory leak detection, and profiling.
  • x64dbg - An open-source x64/x32 debugger for windows.

Integrated Development Environment

List of C or C nominal IDEs.

  • Anjuta DevStudio - The GNOME IDE. [GPL3]
  • AppCode - an IDE for Objective-C, C, C , and JavaScript development built on JetBrains’ IntelliJ IDEA platform.
  • Cevelop - Cross-platform C and C IDE based on Eclipse CDT with additional plug-ins.
  • CLion - Cross-platform C and C IDE from JetBrains.
  • Code::Blocks - A free C, C and Fortran IDE.
  • CodeLite - Another cross-plaform, free C and C IDE. [GPL2 with an exception for plugins]
  • color_coded - A vim plugin for libclang-based highlighting. [MIT]
  • Dev-C - A portable C/C /C 11 IDE.
  • Eclipse CDT - A fully functional C and C IDE based on the Eclipse platform.
  • Geany - Small, fast, cross-platform IDE. [GPL]
  • IBM VisualAge - A family of computer integrated development environments from IBM.
  • Irony-mode - A C/C minor mode for Emacs powered by libclang.
  • juCi - Cross-platform, lightweight C IDE with libclang integration. [MIT]
  • KDevelop - A free, open source IDE.
  • Microsoft Visual Studio - An IDE from Microsoft.
  • NetBeans - An IDE for developing primarily with Java, but also with other languages, in particular PHP, C/C , and HTML5.
  • Qt Creator ⚡ - A cross-platform C , JavaScript and QML IDE which is part of the SDK for Qt.
  • rtags - A c/c client/server indexer with for integration with emacs based on clang.
  • Xcode - Developed by Apple.
  • YouCompleteMe - YouCompleteMe is a fast, as-you-type, fuzzy-search code completion engine for Vim.
  • cquery - A C code completion engine for vscode, emacs, vim, etc.

Build Systems

  • Bazel - A multi-language, fast and scalable build system from Google. [Apache]
  • Bear - A tool to generate compilation database for clang tooling. [GPLv3]
  • clib - Package manager for the C programming language. [MIT]
  • CMake - Cross-platform free and open-source software for managing the build process of software using a compiler-independent method. [BSD]
  • C Archive Network - Cross-platform C Dependency Manager with a lot of packages available.
  • Cget - Cmake package retrieval. [Boost] website
  • Conan - C/C Package Manager, open sourced. [MIT]
  • CPM - A C Package Manager based on CMake and Git.
  • FASTBuild - High performance, open-source build system supporting highly scalable compilation, caching and network distribution.
  • Hunter - CMake driven cross-platform package manager for C . [BSD-2]
  • MesonBuild - An open source build system meant to be both extremely fast, and, even more importantly, as user friendly as possible.
  • Ninja - A small build system with a focus on speed.
  • Scons - A software construction tool configured with a Python script.
  • Sconsolidator - Scons build system integration for Eclipse CDT.
  • Spack - A flexible package manager that supports multiple versions, configurations, platforms, and compilers. [Apache-2.0/MIT]
  • tundra - High-performance code build system designed to give the best possible incremental build times even for very large software projects.
  • tup - File-based build system that monitors in the background for changed files.
  • Premake - A tool configured with a Lua script to generate project files for Visual Studio, GNU Make, Xcode, Code::Blocks, and more across Windows, Mac OS X, and Linux.
  • Vcpkg - C library manager for Windows, Linux, and MacOS. [MIT]
  • waf - Python-based framework for configuring, compiling and installing applications. [BSD] website
  • XMake - A C/C cross-platform build utility based on Lua. [Apache]

Static Code Analysis

List of tools for improving quality and reducing defects by code analysis

  • Cppcheck - A tool for static C/C code analysis. - source
  • CppDepend - Simplifies managing a complex C/C code base by analyzing and visualizing code dependencies, by defining design rules, by doing impact analysis, and comparing different versions of the code.
  • cpplint - A C style checker following Google's C style guide.
  • PVS-Studio - A tool for bug detection in the source code of programs, written in C, C and C#.
  • cpp-dependencies - Tool to check C #include dependencies (dependency graphs created in .dot format). [Apache]
  • include-what-you-use - A tool for use with clang to analyze includes in C and C source files. website
  • Infer - A static analyzer for Java, C and Objective-C. [BSD]
  • OCLint - A static source code analysis tool to improve quality and reduce defects for C, C and Objective-C. - source
  • Clang Static Analyzer - A source code analysis tool that finds bugs in C, C , and Objective-C programs.
  • Linticator - Eclipse CDT integration of Pc-/FlexeLint.
  • List of tools for static code analysis - A list of tools for static code analysis from Wikipedia.

Coding Style Tools

Resources

Various resources, such as books, websites, and articles for improving your C development skills and knowledge.

API Design

Articles

Fantastic C related articles.

Books

Fantastic C or C related books.

Coding Style

Podcasts

  • CppCast - The first podcast by C developers for C developers.
  • CppChat - A (sometimes) weekly look at what's going on in the world of C chatting with a guest from the community.

Talks

Videos

Fantastic C or C related videos.

Websites

Useful C or C related websites.

  • Standard C ⚡ - News, Status & Discussion about Standard C .
  • CppCon - The C Conference.
  • C reference - C 98, C 03, C 11, C 14 reference.
  • cplusplus.com - The C Resources Network.
  • C FAQ - C frequently asked questions.
  • C FAQ - C frequently asked questions.
  • C FQA Lite - C frequently questioned answers.
  • Guru of the Week - A regular series of C programming problems created and written by Herb Sutter.
  • Meeting C
  • C Quiz - C quiz in which you propose to find errors in code fragments of open source projects.
  • Udemy C Courses and Tutorials
  • C Hints - Every business day hints about most often C mistakes and ways to solve them from PVS-Studio Team.
  • C tutorial - A user ranked online tutorial bank site displaying multiple courses to learn C from.

Weblogs

Useful C or C related weblogs.

Other Awesome Projects

Collection of useful codes, snippets, ...

Other Awesome Lists

Other amazingly awesome lists

Contributing

Please take a quick gander at the contribution guidelines for details. Thanks to all contributors; you rock!

If you see a project or link here that is no longer maintained or is not a good fit, please submit a pull request to improve this document. Thank you!

About

A curated list of awesome C (or C) frameworks, libraries, resources, and shiny things. Inspired by awesome-... stuff.

fffaraz.github.io/awesome-cpp/

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