# enki/libev

Full-featured high-performance event loop loosely modelled after libevent

Repository: https://github.com/enki/libev
Canonical: https://ross.abutalabs.com/products/libev
Homepage: http://software.schmorp.de/pkg/libev
Language: Shell
License: NOASSERTION
License Family: other
Last push: 2020-11-24T01:30:53+00:00

## Health v2 (maintenance only)
Score: 32/100 (v2, computed 2026-09-03T02:20:16.233290+00:00)
- activity 0, release rhythm 35, longevity 100
- inputs: {"age_days": 5524, "days_push": 2109, "days_rel": null, "gap_med": null, "n_releases_24m": 0}
- flags: no_releases, no_license
- formula: round(0.45*activity + 0.35*rhythm + 0.20*longevity); archived -> min(score, 10)

## Adoption (not part of the score)
Stars 1786, forks 447 (observed 2026-08-28T04:05:36.126093+00:00)

## What it is
libev is a high-performance, full-featured event loop library for C, loosely modelled after libevent but faster, smaller, and more featureful. It provides optimized select/poll/epoll/kqueue/event-ports backends, timers, file watching, fork support, and optional C++ and Perl interfaces.

## Use cases
- build a high-performance network server with an event loop
- embed an event loop in a C or C++ application
- replace libevent with a faster, smaller alternative
- watch filesystem paths for changes with inotify
- implement timers and cron-like scheduled events in C
- write async I/O for a language runtime like Node.js or Ruby

## When to choose
- you need a small, dependency-free, embeddable event loop in C/C++
- performance and low memory footprint are critical
- you need portable backends across epoll, kqueue, select, and event ports
- you want fork-safe event loop handling

## When to avoid
- you need a higher-level async framework with rich abstractions
- you prefer a library with frequent releases and active development
- you need built-in HTTP or DNS facilities like libevent or libuv provide

## Facets
- artifact type: library
- maturity: maintenance
- function: concurrency, networking, developer-tools
- domain: developer-tools, performance, microservices
- platform: windows, bsd, cpp, c
- tags: event-loop, libevent-alternative, epoll, kqueue, async-io, c-library, linux, macos

## Member repositories
- enki/libev (main) score 32

## Provenance
- Observed fields: from GitHub, fetched 2026-08-28T04:05:36.126093+00:00.
- Health v2: computed from the inputs above; adoption is never an input.
- Inferred fields (summary, facets, guidance): AI-extracted, prompt v1, taxonomy v1, on 2026-08-30T03:24:09.908052+00:00, confidence not recorded.
  - readme: https://github.com/enki/libev (fetched 2026-08-28T04:05:36.126093+00:00, sha 61f7a4969c1d)
- Data as of 2026-08-30T08:39:29.467469+00:00.