managarm/mlibc

Health v2 · maintenance only

Flags: no_license

Adoption not part of the score

1127 stars · 217 forks observed · 2026-08-28

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

mlibc is a portable, fully featured C standard library designed for easy porting to new operating systems via a clean syscall abstraction layer. It aims for glibc/musl feature parity, including full pthread support and GNU extensions, and can run software like Xorg, Mesa, and WebKitGTK.

Use cases

• port a C standard library to a new hobby operating system
• provide POSIX pthread support on a custom kernel
• run existing Linux software like Xorg or Mesa on a non-Linux OS
• replace glibc or musl with a portable libc for an embedded or research OS
• build a libc with opt-in POSIX and Linux API options

When to choose

• you are developing a new operating system and need a full-featured C library
• you want glibc/musl-level feature parity rather than a minimal libc like newlib
• you need a clean sysdeps abstraction to plug in custom syscall implementations
• you want to run complex software such as Wayland compositors or web browsers on your OS

When to avoid

• you are targeting Linux, macOS, or Windows and should use the platform's native libc
• you need a battle-tested, production-hardened libc for a mainstream server environment
• you require a minimal footprint libc for deeply constrained embedded systems
• you depend on features mlibc has not yet implemented, as some features are still missing

Facets

library · maturity active

programming-language compiler developer-tools operating-systems developer-tools cross-platform cpp c embedded c-standard-library libc posix sysdeps operating-system-ports glibc-compatible musl-alternative linux

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