rui314/chibicc

Health v2 · maintenance only

Flags: no_releases

Adoption not part of the score

11855 stars · 1066 forks observed · 2026-08-28

What it is AI-extracted, prompt v1, taxonomy v1, 2026-08-30, confidence not recorded

chibicc is a small C compiler written in C that implements most of the C11 standard and can compile real-world programs like Git, SQLite, and libpng. It serves as the reference implementation for a book on writing C compilers, with each commit corresponding to a book section for incremental learning.

Use cases

• learn how a C compiler is implemented step by step
• study compiler internals like parsing, code generation, and linking
• compile small C programs with a lightweight alternative compiler
• read a readable reference implementation of C11 features
• use as a base for building your own compiler

When to choose

• you want to learn compiler construction from a clean, incremental codebase
• you need a small, readable C compiler for experimentation or teaching
• you want to see how specific C11 features are implemented commit by commit

When to avoid

• you need a production-grade compiler with full optimization - use GCC or Clang
• you require complete C11/C17 conformance or long-term support
• you need a compiler with active development and community support

Facets

library · maturity maintenance

compiler parser interpreter developer-tools compilers programming-languages parsers education developer-tools windows cpp c cli c11 toy-compiler learning-resource compiler-internals reference-implementation linux macos

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markdown · JSON · MCP: product_card(name="rui314/chibicc")