path: root/docs/wiki.musl-libc.org_alternatives.txt

   [1]musl libc logo musl libc A new libc striving to be fast, simple,
   lightweight, free, and correct

   ____________________
     * [2]Alternative Libraries and Programs
          + [3]Compression/Decompression
          + [4]Cryptography
          + [5]Databases
          + [6]Graphics
          + [7]Video
          + [8]X11 alternatives
          + [9]Compilers/preprocessors
          + [10]Scripting languages
          + [11]PDF
          + [12]Regular Expressions
     * [13]Code Collections and Basic Libraries/Programs
     * [14]General Suggestions/Recommendations

                                  Alternatives

   Resource list for alternative libraries and programs that are
   lightweight, not bloated, efficient or have other useful design
   characteristics and may be usable with musl.

                       Alternative Libraries and Programs

     * [15]pkgconf - Drop in replacement for pkg-config with no circular
       dependencies. Does not require glib.
     * [16]netbsd-curses - Drop in replacement for ncurses and ncursesw,
       ported from netbsd. considerably smaller than ncurses.
     * [17]slibtool - Independent reimplementation of slibtool, aiming to
       maintain compatibility and removing features that are unneeded on
       modern systems.
     * [18]cDetect - C replacement for feature detection generally
       provided by utilities like GNU autotools.
     * [19]freeglut - Replacement for glut.
     * [20]libutf - UTF8 library (note that by using musl, UTF8 support is
       automatically enabled. no need to use any 3rd party library)
     * [21]gettext-tiny - gettext replacement. Provides an
       extra-compatible implementation of libintl for musl, or a no-op,
       along with several no-op gettext utilities, and a complete msgfmt
       implementation.
     * [22]gettext-stub - Provides a stub replacement for libintl.
     * [23]libdrpc - Port of RPC based on Android's libdrpc. Replaces
       parts of older glibc RPC functionality and/or libtirpc.
     * [24]libsep - Minimal RPC library to assist compartmentalization of
       small applications.
     * [25]minised - Faster but limited earlier version of sed. (note that
       busybox 1.20.2's sed implementation is 100% POSIX compatible and
       feature-complete)
     * [26]ignite - init replacement, works with runit.
     * [27]linenoise - lightweight readline replacement.
     * [28]libedit - drop-in replacement for readline ([29]needs a handful
       of symlinks). about 30% less code. lacks some rare functions but is
       compatible with a number of readline users, like gdb.
     * [DEL: [30]termbox - alternative to ncurses for simple terminal
       apps. 16 colors only. very small, clean, well designed code. :DEL]
       only up to commit [31]66c3f91b
     * [32]tinyalsa - alternative to alsalib (interfacing with kernel's
       ALSA API).
     * [33]libnl-tiny - drop-in replacement for netlink (libnl 1.2). may
       need some [34]compatibility CFLAGS.
     * [35]uuterm - slim terminal emulator written by musl's author.
     * [36]udhcpc - small DHCP client, part of Busybox. use these [37]two
       [38]scripts to operate it.
     * [39]ndhc - small DHCP client, focus on security.
     * [40]mandoc - alternative to massively bloated groff and
       accompanying manpage implementation.
     * [41]moe - A powerful and user-friendly console text editor
       (alternative to GNU Nano and Joe), but written in C++...
     * [42]textadept - Highly configurable and customizable text editor
       written in C (and Lua) and based on Scintilla editor widget.
       Terminal version works with ncurses or pdcurses. Also check out
       Scinterm, the ncurses based version of the Scintilla editor
       component.
     * [43]slock - minimalist alternative to xlock and xlockmore.
     * [44]star - Alternative to GNU tar.
     * [45]uSTL - replacement for the C++ STL (Standard Template Library).
     * [46]samurai - drop-in replacement for ninja written in C.
     * [47]ETL - Embedded Template Library. A C++ template library for
       embedded applications.
     * [48]svn-lite - read-only replacement for bloated apache.org SVN
       client. includes svn2git tool. useful for checking out that
       occasional repo still not migrated to git.

Compression/Decompression

     * [49]Sortix libz cleaned up, modern fork of zlib.
     * [50]libarchive bsdtar offers a replacement for gnu tar.
     * [51]Lzip family of data compressors based on the LZMA algorithm.
       See [Benchmark], and [Quality-assurance].
     * [52]XZ Embedded small XZ decompressor library.
     * [53]lzo very fast compression library.
     * [54]gzfile.c C routines to read gzipped files.
     * [55]miniz Single C source file Deflate/Inflate compression library
       with zlib-compatible API, ZIP archive reading/writing, PNG writing.
     * [56]flate small gzip compatible compressor lib
     * [57]lz4 extremely fast (BSD-licensed) compression algorithm
     * [58]lz4 alternate lz4 implementation (BSD-licensed), even smaller
     * [59]basic compression library non-bloated (zlib-licensed)
       implementation of several basic compression algorithms.

   [60]Large Text Compression Benchmark

Cryptography

     * [61]TweetNaCl tiny, fully NaCl-compatible high-security
       cryptography library (single C file)
     * [62]libtomcrypt public domain cryptography library
     * [63]kripto lightweight cryptography library written in ISO C99.
       WIP.
     * [64]libsodium encryption/decryption library
     * [65]tropicssl SSL library (BSD) - unmaintained and lacking a few
       patches for recent vulnerabilities found in PolarSSL.
     * [66]PolarSSL SSL library (GPL) - commercialized and relicensed fork
       of tropicssl.
     * [67]cyassl SSL library (GPL)
     * [68]axtls SSL library (BSD license)
     * [69]selene SSL/TLS library (Apache license)
     * [70]Dropbear replacement for OpenSSH.
     * [71]LibreSSL drop-in replacement for (and fork of) OpenSSL.

Databases

     * [72]tinyCDB small constant database library. Perl wrappers are
       available on CPAN.
     * [73]LMDB high-performance, mmap'd key-value store used in the
       OpenLDAP project.

Graphics

     * [74]Agar MIT-licensed, lightweight GUI toolkit lib written in C
     * [75]iup lightweight and portable GUI toolkit written in C, has Lua
       bindings
     * [76]mtk lightweight GUI library written in C. currently writes
       directly to videomem of the milkymist open source hardware
       platform. requires port to X/SDL/FB.
     * [77]GraphApp Toolkit for platform-independent graphical user
       interface programming in the C language.
     * [78]m2tklib Mini Interactive Interface Toolkit Library - a portable
       graphical and character user interface (GUI+CUI) library for
       embedded systems.
     * [79]ftk GUI library for embedded systems.
     * [80]SVG library
     * [81]SDL_svg library
     * [82]pnglite
     * [83]simple-png
     * [84]lodepng single-file implementation to read png files. requires
       zlib.
     * [85]picojpeg
     * [86]SOIL Simple OpenGL Image Library
     * [87]gleri OpenGL implementation for remote GL usage.
     * [88]TinyGL OpenGL implementation with software rendering. needs
       some fixes to work on 64bit arches.

Video

     * [89]mpv video player forked from mplayer2 with tons of junk
       removed. builds in seconds.

X11 alternatives

     * [90]tinyxlib
     * [91]nano-x
     * [92]directfb

Compilers/preprocessors

     * [93]ucpp C99 preprocessor library and program.
     * [94]mcpp another C99 preprocessor library and program.
     * [95]sparse mostly C99 compatible semantic analyzer and C frontend
       written by Linus Torvalds.
     * [96]firm/cparser C99 compatible C compiler and optimization
       framework. x86 and SPARC backends.
     * [97]GPP General Purpose Preprocessor. Has added functionality not
       available in a standard C preprocessor. Can be used as a
       preprocessor or working with templates.
     * [98]vbcc mostly C99 compatible C compiler. open source but non-free
       LICENSE.
     * [99]cproc very promising and clean C11 compiler, using QBE as its
       backend. can compile most C codebases, including GCC 4.7.4. roughly
       10x faster than GCC 8.
     * [100]lacc very fast C11 compiler, targetting amd64. not far away
       from approaching TCC's speed.
     * [101]pcc fast C99 compiler, targetting various archs. about 20x
       faster than gcc while achieving ~80% of its performance.
     * [102]qbe codegen backend for compiler projects. current emits code
       for amd64 and aarch64. achieves ~70% of performance of GCC -O2,
       with roughly 10KLOC.
     * [103]mir JIT codegen backend. supports most 64bit archs, and
       features a full C11 compiler frontend to generate mir bytecode, and
       an interpreter for the bytecode. targets 70% of GCC -O2
       performance.
     * [104]lightning very versatile JIT codegen backend, using a single
       input RISC mnemonic language, and featuring codegen for almost all
       existing architectures.

Scripting languages

     * [105]Lua is a full-fledged small embeddable as well as standalone
       language. Pretty popular, but some semantic choices may make
       conscious programmer cringe: accessing non-existent (mistyped)
       variable returns legitimate value, array indexes start from 1, etc.
     * [106]Quasar m4 is a small GNU m4-compatible re-implementation
       derived from the FreeBSD m4.
     * [107]Squirrel is embeddable language with C-like syntax and minimal
       number of syntax/semantics idiosyncrasies. Uses reference counting.
       Core builds to ~250KB for i386. uses C++ though.
          + [108]General-Purpose Squirrel - fork to make a standalone
            general-purpose language out of Squirrel core, without
            compromising on lightweightedness.
     * [109]jim embedded Tcl scripting engine in ANSI C. compiles to
       100-200KB depending on feature set.
     * [110]TinyJS An extremely simple (~2000 line) JavaScript
       interpreter.
     * [111]42TinyJS Fork of TinyJS with more functionality.
     * [112]Quad-Wheel Small but full-ECMA-262 supported JavaScript
       engine, written in ANSI C.
     * [113]tinypy Minimalist implementation of python in 64k of code.

PDF

     * [114]mupdf Lightweight PDF viewer.
     * [115]Poppler versus mupdf

Regular Expressions

   Musl's regular expressions pattern matching routines are based on the
   [116]TRE library. The Musl version of the code contains at least two
   bug fixes that were never fixed in the original code. For file pattern
   matching (fnmatch), musl uses an implementation based on the "Sea of
   Stars" algorithm.

   Comparing Perl regular expressions implementations to Regex
   implementations shows pattern matching performance for various cases,
   but it can be like comparing apples to oranges. Perl regular expression
   pattern matching is not equivalent to a regular language which can be
   solved by a finite state automata. Some regex extensions also may not
   be compliant with the definition of a formal regular language.
     * [117]Regular Expression Matching Can Be Simple And Fast One
       comparison between regex and Perl regular expressions.
     * [118]Regex Benchmark Compares various regular expression methods'
       performances.
     * [119]PCRE performance Comparison of PCRE JIT with other regular
       expression methods' performances. Older performance comparisons
       don't typically include PCRE JIT which has better performance than
       standard PCRE. They just use standard PCRE.

                 Code Collections and Basic Libraries/Programs

     * [120]Toybox
     * [121]Busybox
     * [122]Heirloom Project
     * [123]Utilities Chest - a set of Unix utilities written to be simple
       and small
     * [124]picobsd
     * [125]obase Port of OpenBSD userland to Linux
     * [126]noXCUse New Open XCU Simple Edition; or, No Excuse for bloat
       and brokenness: a set of Unix utilities developed by musl's author.
     * [127]pikhq-coreutils a (small) set of Unix utilities.
     * [128]hardcore-utils a (small) set of Unix utilities.
     * [129]sbase portable set of suckless Unix utilities
     * [130]ubase Linux-specific set of suckless Unix utilities
       (util-linux replacement)
     * [131]lazy-utils a (small) set of Unix utilities to complement
       toybox
     * [132]usul From the main developer of sbase. non-POSIX tabular Unix
       utilities.
     * [133]lit cave Has a lot of lightweight replacement programs,
       including a troff implementation, utilities using framebuffer and a
       C compiler.
     * [134]elks The elks tarball includes a collection ("elkscmd") of
       very lightweight standard Unix programs, taken from Minix and other
       sources. Also includes lightweight man alternative (bugfixed
       version is included in hardcore-utils).
     * [135]skarnet software Various utilities.
     * [136]Bizarre Sources Init replacement and other small programs.

                      General Suggestions/Recommendations

     * [137]Stuff that rocks Suckless.org recommendations on libraries
       they prefer.
     * [138]Harmful software Uriel's alternatives list. Not maintained.
     * [139]Puppy Linux forum thread on Unbloated resources
     * [140]choosing an ssl library
     * [141]Busybox tiny utility recommendations
     * [142]Unbloated resources in C (beware of stb* from nothings.org
       since author is ignorant about invoking UB)
     * [143]embutils
     * [144]MinGW Useful links I realize the page is for MinGW, but it has
       several cross-platform library recommendations including a large
       list of GUIs. It's easier to refer to that page than to try to
       maintain two sets of library lists (here and at the MinGW wiki) for
       certain categories.

   You can contribute to this wiki! Submit pull-requests to
   [145]somasis/musl-wiki.
   [146]Build status [147]GitHub issues
   This work is licensed under the [148]Creative Commons
   Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported license, unless otherwise noted.

References

   1. https://wiki.musl-libc.org/
   2. https://wiki.musl-libc.org/alternatives.html#Alternative-Libraries-and-Programs
   3. https://wiki.musl-libc.org/alternatives.html#Compression/Decompression
   4. https://wiki.musl-libc.org/alternatives.html#Cryptography
   5. https://wiki.musl-libc.org/alternatives.html#Databases
   6. https://wiki.musl-libc.org/alternatives.html#Graphics
   7. https://wiki.musl-libc.org/alternatives.html#Video
   8. https://wiki.musl-libc.org/alternatives.html#X11-alternatives
   9. https://wiki.musl-libc.org/alternatives.html#Compilers/preprocessors
  10. https://wiki.musl-libc.org/alternatives.html#Scripting-languages
  11. https://wiki.musl-libc.org/alternatives.html#PDF
  12. https://wiki.musl-libc.org/alternatives.html#Regular-Expressions
  13. https://wiki.musl-libc.org/alternatives.html#Code-Collections-and-Basic-Libraries/Programs
  14. https://wiki.musl-libc.org/alternatives.html#General-Suggestions/Recommendations
  15. https://github.com/pkgconf/pkgconf
  16. https://github.com/sabotage-linux/netbsd-curses
  17. http://git.midipix.org/cgit.cgi/slibtool
  18. http://sourceforge.net/projects/cdetect/
  19. http://freeglut.sourceforge.net/
  20. https://github.com/cls/libutf
  21. https://github.com/sabotage-linux/gettext-tiny
  22. http://penma.de/code/gettext-stub/
  23. https://github.com/idunham/libdrpc
  24. https://github.com/marinosi/libsep
  25. http://www.exactcode.com/site/open_source/minised/
  26. https://github.com/chneukirchen/ignite
  27. https://github.com/antirez/linenoise
  28. http://www.thrysoee.dk/editline/
  29. https://github.com/sabotage-linux/sabotage/blob/master/pkg/libedit#L19
  30. https://github.com/nsf/termbox
  31. https://github.com/nsf/termbox/commit/66c3f91b14e24510319bce6b5cc2fecf8cf5abff#commitcomment-3790714
  32. https://github.com/tinyalsa/tinyalsa
  33. https://github.com/sabotage-linux/libnl-tiny
  34. https://github.com/sabotage-linux/sabotage/blob/master/pkg/wpa-supplicant#L20
  35. http://git.musl-libc.org/cgit/uuterm/
  36. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Udhcpc
  37. https://github.com/sabotage-linux/sabotage/blob/master/KEEP/etc/udhcpc-script
  38. https://github.com/sabotage-linux/sabotage/blob/master/KEEP/bin/dhclient
  39. https://github.com/niklata/ndhc
  40. http://mdocml.bsd.lv/
  41. http://gnu.org/software/moe
  42. http://foicica.com/textadept/
  43. http://tools.suckless.org/slock
  44. http://freecode.com/projects/star
  45. https://github.com/msharov/ustl
  46. https://github.com/michaelforney/samurai
  47. https://www.etlcpp.com/
  48. https://github.com/rofl0r/svn-lite
  49. https://sortix.org/libz/
  50. http://www.libarchive.org/
  51. http://lzip.nongnu.org/lzip.html
  52. http://tukaani.org/xz/embedded.html
  53. http://www.oberhumer.com/opensource/lzo/
  54. http://wizard.ae.krakow.pl/~jb/gzfile/
  55. http://code.google.com/p/miniz/
  56. https://oldgit.suckless.org/flate/
  57. https://github.com/Cyan4973/lz4
  58. https://github.com/htruong/lz4
  59. http://bcl.comli.eu/home-en.html
  60. http://mattmahoney.net/dc/text.html
  61. http://tweetnacl.cr.yp.to/
  62. https://github.com/libtom/libtomcrypt
  63. https://github.com/lightbit/kripto
  64. https://github.com/jedisct1/libsodium
  65. https://github.com/axic/tropicssl
  66. https://polarssl.org/
  67. http://yassl.com/yaSSL/Home.html
  68. http://axtls.sourceforge.net/
  69. https://github.com/pquerna/selene
  70. https://matt.ucc.asn.au/dropbear/dropbear.html
  71. http://www.libressl.org/
  72. http://www.corpit.ru/mjt/tinycdb.html
  73. http://symas.com/mdb/
  74. http://libagar.org/
  75. http://www.tecgraf.puc-rio.br/iup/
  76. https://github.com/milkymist/mtk
  77. http://enchantia.com/software/graphapp/index.html
  78. https://code.google.com/p/m2tklib/
  79. https://code.google.com/p/ftk/
  80. http://www.netsurf-browser.org/projects/libsvgtiny/
  81. http://www.linuxmotors.com/SDL_svg/
  82. http://sourceforge.net/projects/pnglite/files/
  83. https://code.google.com/p/simple-png/
  84. http://lodev.org/lodepng/
  85. https://code.google.com/p/picojpeg/
  86. http://lonesock.net/soil.html
  87. https://github.com/msharov/gleri
  88. http://bellard.org/TinyGL/
  89. http://mpv.io/
  90. https://github.com/idunham/tinyxlib
  91. http://www.microwindows.org/
  92. http://directfb.org/
  93. http://code.google.com/p/ucpp/
  94. http://mcpp.sourceforge.net/
  95. https://git.kernel.org/cgit/devel/sparse/sparse.git/
  96. http://pp.info.uni-karlsruhe.de/firm/
  97. http://en.nothingisreal.com/wiki/GPP
  98. https://github.com/kusma/vbcc
  99. https://git.sr.ht/~mcf/cproc/
 100. https://github.com/larmel/lacc
 101. http://pcc.ludd.ltu.se/
 102. http://c9x.me/compile/
 103. https://github.com/vnmakarov/mir/
 104. https://www.gnu.org/software/lightning/
 105. http://www.lua.org/
 106. http://haddonthethird.net/m4/
 107. http://squirrel-lang.org/
 108. https://github.com/pfalcon/squirrel-modules
 109. http://jim.tcl.tk/
 110. http://code.google.com/p/tiny-js/
 111. https://code.google.com/p/42tiny-js/
 112. http://code.google.com/p/quad-wheel/
 113. http://www.tinypy.org/
 114. http://www.mupdf.com/
 115. http://hzqtc.github.io/2012/04/poppler-vs-mupdf.html
 116. http://laurikari.net/tre/
 117. http://swtch.com/~rsc/regexp/regexp1.html
 118. http://lh3lh3.users.sourceforge.net/reb.shtml
 119. http://sljit.sourceforge.net/pcre.html
 120. http://landley.net/toybox
 121. http://www.busybox.net/
 122. http://heirloom.sourceforge.net/
 123. https://github.com/eltanin-os/utilchest
 124. http://code.google.com/p/freebsd-head/source/browse/release/?r=bbfa6f219c41b6850ef0e7699f439ad5488435ae#release%2Fpicobsd
 125. https://github.com/chneukirchen/obase
 126. http://git.musl-libc.org/cgit/noxcuse/tree/
 127. https://github.com/pikhq/pikhq-coreutils
 128. https://github.com/rofl0r/hardcore-utils
 129. http://git.suckless.org/sbase
 130. http://git.suckless.org/ubase
 131. https://github.com/dimkr/lazy-utils
 132. http://lubutu.com/soso/usul
 133. http://litcave.rudi.ir/
 134. http://elks.sourceforge.net/
 135. http://skarnet.org/software/
 136. http://www.energymech.net/users/proton/
 137. http://suckless.org/rocks
 138. http://harmful.cat-v.org/software/
 139. http://www.murga-linux.com/puppy/viewtopic.php?t=72359
 140. http://teholabs.com/?p=445
 141. http://busybox.net/tinyutils.html
 142. http://bashismal.blogspot.com/2011/10/unbloated-resources-in-c.html
 143. http://www.fefe.de/embutils/
 144. http://www.mingw.org/wiki/Community_Supplied_Links
 145. https://github.com/somasis/musl-wiki
 146. https://github.com/somasis/musl-wiki/actions/workflows/main.yml
 147. https://github.com/somasis/musl-wiki/issues
 148. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0