Open Source C Libraries
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C Libraries
View 77 business solutionsBrowse free open source C Libraries and projects below. Use the toggles on the left to filter open source C Libraries by OS, license, language, programming language, and project status.
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libjpeg-turbo
SIMD-accelerated libjpeg-compatible JPEG codec library
libjpeg-turbo is a JPEG image codec that uses SIMD instructions (MMX, SSE2, NEON, AltiVec) to accelerate baseline JPEG compression and decompression on x86, x86-64, ARM, and PowerPC systems. On such systems, libjpeg-turbo is generally 2-6x as fast as libjpeg, all else being equal. On other types of systems, libjpeg-turbo can still outperform libjpeg by a significant amount, by virtue of its highly-optimized Huffman coding routines. In many cases, the performance of libjpeg-turbo rivals that of proprietary high-speed JPEG codecs. libjpeg-turbo implements both the traditional libjpeg API as well as the less powerful but more straightforward TurboJPEG API. libjpeg-turbo also features colorspace extensions that allow it to compress from/decompress to 32-bit and big-endian pixel buffers (RGBX, XBGR, etc.), as well as a full-featured Java interface. -
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This is the fast and Free (LGPL license) real time MPEG Audio Layer 1, 2 and 3 decoding library and console player. It uses floating point or integer math, along with several special optimizations (3DNow, SSE, ARM, ...) to make it most efficient.
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opencore-amr
Audio codecs extracted from Android Open Source Project
Library of OpenCORE Framework implementation of Adaptive Multi Rate Narrowband and Wideband (AMR-NB and AMR-WB) speech codec. Library of VisualOn implementation of Adaptive Multi Rate Wideband (AMR-WB) encoder and Advanced Audio Coding (AAC) encoder. Modified library of Fraunhofer AAC decoder and encoder. -
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Octave Forge
A collection of packages providing extra functionality for GNU Octave
Octave Forge is a central location for collaborative development of packages for GNU Octave. The Octave Forge packages expand Octave's core functionality by providing field specific features via Octave's package system. See https://octave.sourceforge.io/packages.php for a list of all available packages. GNU Octave is a high-level interpreted language, primarily intended for numerical computations. It provides capabilities for the numerical solution of linear and nonlinear problems, and for performing other numerical experiments. It also provides extensive graphics capabilities for data visualization and manipulation. Octave is normally used through its interactive command line interface, but it can also be used to write non-interactive programs. The Octave language is quite similar to Matlab so that most programs are easily portable. Refer to https://www.octave.org for more information. -
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LuaBinaries is a distribution of the Lua libraries and executables compiled for several platforms.
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libusb
A cross-platform library that gives apps easy access to USB devices
Library to enable user space application programs to communicate with USB devices -
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GTK+2 for Windows Runtime Environment
The files required to run GTK+ applications on Windows
This is the GTK+2 Runtime Environment Installer for Windows. It includes all of the files required to run GTK+2 applications on Windows. Some support tools are also available. This project is no longer maintained. Please use its successor: https://github.com/tschoonj/GTK-for-Windows-Runtime-Environment-Installer -
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Win flex-bison
Win flex-bison is a port Flex & Bison tools to the Windows platform
Win flex-bison is a windows port the Flex (the fast lexical analyser) and Bison (GNU parser generator). win_flex based on Flex version 2.6.3 source code and win_bison based on Bison version 2.7 and they depend on system libraries only. Git repository: https://github.com/lexxmark/winflexbison UPDATE1: Bison version 3.x.x available in Files section in win_flex_bison3-latest.zip package. UPDATE2: Now "winflexbison" available as package in Chocolatey (https://chocolatey.org/packages/winflexbison and https://chocolatey.org/packages/winflexbison3) UPDATE3: You can use VS custom build rules to simplify working with winflexbison in Visual Studio 2010 and upper (https://sourceforge.net/p/winflexbison/wiki/Visual%20Studio%20custom%20build%20rules/). -
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The OpenGL Extension Wrangler Library is a simple tool that helps C/C++ developers initialize extensions and write portable applications. GLEW currently supports a variety of operating systems, including Windows, Linux, Darwin, Irix, and Solaris.
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POSIX Threads for Windows
An implementation of the POSIX threads API for Windows
Also known as "pthreads-win32", POSIX Threads for Windows implements a large subset of the threads related API from the Single Unix Specification Version 3. Conformance and quality are high priorities of this mature library. Development began in 1998 and has continued with numerous significant professional contributions. Please note:- whilst PThreads4W can be built and run by it, MinGW64 includes it's own default POSIX Threads library called "winpthreads". The two are not compatible and in order to build and run PThreads4W (formerly PThreads-WIn32) MinGW64 must be installed without win32pthreads. If you want or need to build and run with PThreads4W then you need to choose win32 threading instead of POSIX when you install MinGW64 to not install the conflicting winpthreads include and library files. -
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*NOTE* Migrated to http://github.com/cracklib/cracklib Next generation version of libCrack password checking library. As of Oct 2008 (reflected in 2.8.15 code release), licensed under LGPL.
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OpenCorePkg
OpenCore bootloader
OpenCorePkg is an open-source, modular UEFI (Unified Extensible Firmware Interface) bootloader and development framework, primarily designed to enable macOS booting on non-Apple hardware (Hackintosh). It includes Apple-specific UEFI drivers, utilities for macOS installation support, and shared libraries used across Acidanthera projects. Apple disk image loading support. Apple keyboard input aggregation. Apple PE image signature verification. Apple UEFI secure boot supplemental code. Audio management with screen reading support. Basic ACPI and SMBIOS manipulation. -
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raylib
A simple and easy-to-use library to enjoy videogames programming
raylib is highly inspired by Borland BGI graphics lib and by XNA framework. Do you want to see all functions available in raylib? Check raylib cheatsheet. raylib is a programming library to enjoy videogames programming; no fancy interface, no visual helpers, no auto-debugging, just coding in the most pure spartan-programmers way. raylib has received several recognitions in the last years and many people have written about the library. Here there are the main awards received from Google and Epic Games. raylib supports multiple target platforms, it has been tested in the following platforms but, technically, any platform that supports C language and OpenGL graphics is valid for raylib or can be very easily ported to. raylib can be combined with several extra libraries for additional functionality, some of those libraries are already used internally while others are provided for user integration, most of these libraries are single-file header-only with no external dependencies. -
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AppSync
Unified AppSync dynamic library for iOS 5 and above
AppSync is a tool that enables sideloading and installation of unsigned iOS applications. It allows developers and users to install apps without requiring a paid Apple Developer account. -
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QB64
BASIC for the modern era
QB64 is a modern self-hosting BASIC compiler that brings classic QBasic/QuickBASIC programs into the modern era. It enables legacy code to run on today’s operating systems with minimal modifications, while also introducing new commands and libraries for multimedia, networking, and 64-bit computing. QB64 compiles to C++ and includes a built-in IDE, making it accessible for beginners, hobbyists, and retro programming enthusiasts. It aims to preserve the ease and nostalgia of BASIC while expanding its capabilities for contemporary development. -
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FreeRDP
FreeRDP is a free remote desktop protocol library and clients
FreeRDP is a free implementation of the Remote Desktop Protocol (RDP), released under the Apache license. Enjoy the freedom of using your software wherever you want, the way you want it, in a world where interoperability can finally liberate your computing experience. The nightly builds are installed into /opt/freerdp-nightly and can be installed in parallel with the distributions regular freerdp package. Network tracing of RDP can be quite a challenge due to a number of factors such as encryption, compression, and the fact that these protocol features cannot always be disabled or worked around. One of the easiest way of decrypting RDP traffic is to configure the server with a self-signed certificate for which the private key is known, and then use this certificate with a network tracing tool to automatically decrypt the packets. -
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SDL
Simple DirectMedia Layer
SDL (Simple DirectMedia Layer) is a cross-platform multimedia development library designed to provide low-level access to hardware components such as graphics, audio, input devices, and system resources, making it a foundational tool for building games, emulators, and interactive applications. It abstracts platform-specific functionality into a consistent API, allowing developers to write code once and deploy it across multiple operating systems including Windows, macOS, Linux, iOS, and Android. SDL is written in C but is compatible with C++ and has bindings for multiple other programming languages, making it highly flexible for different development environments. The library is not a game engine itself, but rather a hardware abstraction layer that enables developers to build engines or applications on top of it with full control over performance and rendering. It supports modern graphics APIs such as OpenGL, Vulkan, Direct3D, and Metal. -
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libusb
A cross-platform library to access USB devices
libusb is a library for USB device access from Linux, macOS, Windows, OpenBSD/NetBSD, Haiku and Solaris userspace. It is written in C (Haiku backend in C++) and licensed under the GNU Lesser General Public License version 2.1 or, at your option, any later version. libusb is a C library that provides generic access to USB devices. It is intended to be used by developers to facilitate the production of applications that communicate with USB hardware. Using a single cross-platform API, it provides access to USB devices on Linux, macOS, Windows, etc. No special privilege or elevation is required for the application to communicate with a device. All versions of the USB protocol, from 1.0 to 3.1 (latest), are supported. libusb is abstracted internally in such a way that it can hopefully be ported to other operating systems. -
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Extended Module Player
A multi-format module player and library
libxmp is a library that renders module files to PCM data. xmp is a module player for Unix-like systems, based on libxmp, that plays over 90 mainstream and obscure module formats from Amiga, Atari, Acorn, Apple IIgs and PC, including Protracker (MOD), Scream Tracker 3 (S3M), Fast Tracker II (XM) and Impulse Tracker (IT) files. -
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Mikmod is a module player and library supporting many formats, including mod, s3m, it, and xm. Originally a player for MS-DOS, MikMod has been ported to other platforms, such as Unix, Macintosh, BeOS, and Java(!!)
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WebP Codec
Library to encode and decode images in WebP format
libwebp is the reference codec library for Google’s WebP image format, providing both encoding and decoding along with command-line tools. It supplies cwebp to compress images into WebP and dwebp to decompress them back, making it easy to test quality/size trade-offs across presets and tuning parameters. The GitHub repository is a mirror; the canonical source of truth lives on Chromium’s git, and developer docs are hosted on WebP’s portal. The project underpins WebP support across browsers, imaging libraries, and many native apps thanks to its stable C API. Additional companion repos host test data and demos, including JavaScript builds and timing tests for various platforms. As a widely deployed codec, libwebp balances compression efficiency, speed, and integration simplicity across platforms. -
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libwdi
Windows Driver Installer library for USB devices
libwdi is a cross-platform open-source C library focused on simplifying the installation of device drivers for USB hardware that otherwise does not have automatic driver support, making it especially useful for developers building installers or system management tools. The library abstracts away many of the complexities of USB device enumeration and driver deployment on Windows systems, such as creating a list of devices, preparing appropriate driver files, and invoking the operating system’s driver installation mechanics, so your software doesn’t have to re-implement these low-level tasks. It provides a clean API that includes functions to detect driverless USB devices, prepare driver packages, install drivers programmatically, and handle logging and error codes reliably. Projects integrate this library into custom installers, automated provisioning scripts, or hardware management solutions where users need seamless driver setup without manual steps. -
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usbmuxd
A socket daemon to multiplex connections from and to iOS devices
A socket daemon to multiplex connections from and to iOS devices. usbmuxd stands for "USB multiplexing daemon". This daemon is in charge of multiplexing connections over USB to an iOS device. The daemon is automatically started by udev or systemd depending on what you have configured upon hotplug of an iOS device and exits if the last device was unplugged. When usbmuxd is running it provides a socket interface at /var/run/usbmuxd that is designed to be compatible with the socket interface that is provided on macOS. You should also create an usbmux user that has access to USB devices on your system. Alternatively, just pass a different username using the -U argument. usbmuxd is not used for tethering data transfers which uses a dedicated USB interface to act as a virtual network device. The higher-level layers, especially if you want to write an application to interact with the device, are handled by libimobiledevice. -
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libimobiledevice
A cross-platform protocol library to communicate with iOS devices
libimobiledevice is a cross-platform software library that talks the protocols to interact with iOS devices. Unlike other projects, it does not depend on using any existing proprietary libraries and does not require jailbreaking. Access filesystem of a device, access documents of file sharing apps, retrieve information about a device and modify various settings, backup and restore the device in a native way compatible with iTunes. Manage app icons arrangement on the device, install, remove, list and basically manage apps. Activate a device using official servers, manage contacts, calendars, notes and bookmarks, retrieve and remove crashreports. Retrieve various diagnostics information, establish a debug connection for app debugging, mount filesystem images, forward device notifications, manage device provisioning. Take screenshots from the device screen (requires mounted developer image). Simulate changed geolocation of the device (requires mounted developer image). -
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Darknet YOLO
Real-Time Object Detection for Windows and Linux
This is YOLO-v3 and v2 for Windows and Linux. YOLO (You only look once) is a state-of-the-art, real-time object detection system of Darknet, an open source neural network framework in C. YOLO is extremely fast and accurate. It uses a single neural network to divide a full image into regions, and then predicts bounding boxes and probabilities for each region. This project is a fork of the original Darknet project.