What open source C projects are worth studying for learning good design?

Question

What small open source projects in C are interesting for learning good design?

The project should be:

Not too large (like the linux kernel)
Well documented
Perhaps still under active development

I've just started learning C, and while the language itself is not too difficult, i'm struggling how to design larger applications, so i thought checking out other open source projects would be a good starting point.

Thanks!

possible duplicate of [Learn C from Open Source code](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/144568/learn-c-from-open-source-code) — Greg Hewgill, Jan 03 '11 at 10:48

score 26 · Answer 1 · answered Jan 03 '11 at 12:10

26

Redis (nosql db) is:

under active development
a manageable size
portable and robust
has no external dependancies
very well written, understandable code

answered Jan 03 '11 at 12:10

a2800276

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+1!This is a beautiful answer. – Yavar Feb 06 '13 at 17:18

score 19 · Accepted Answer · answered Jan 03 '11 at 12:01

19

In my opinion, good examples of moderately sized projects written in C are:

GNU Scientific Library (besides the source code, don't miss their design document)
Kazlib
Git

answered Jan 03 '11 at 12:01

jmbr

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Thanks! Found someone visiting Kazlib in my Apache logs, with this question as the referrer. :) – Kaz Dec 22 '13 at 06:40
GNU Scientific Library, seems to be a quite good lib to learn, not only c, but also math & algorithm – Eric Jun 28 '14 at 16:08

score 3 · Answer 3 · answered Jan 03 '11 at 12:15

3

Posix threads are a perfect example of good C design

answered Jan 03 '11 at 12:15

Alexandre C.

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score 2 · Answer 4 · answered Jan 03 '11 at 10:47

2

I like gnucash: http://www.gnucash.org/

No too large like Linux kernel, but still big I think.

answered Jan 03 '11 at 10:47

bcsanches

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score 1 · Answer 5 · answered Jan 03 '11 at 10:43

1

You can start learning from small and well structured applications like http://abygaelle.guillaume-fr.net/trac/gemmes

answered Jan 03 '11 at 10:43

Nicolas

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score 1 · Answer 6 · answered Jan 03 '11 at 10:51

It all depends what kind of projects you are interested in. And what aspect of it (specific algorithms, UI, networking, etc, etc...)

Head over to freshmeat, sourceforge or ohloh and browse the projects for your area of interest.

Alternatively if you want to look at projects that were chosen for a particular reason google summer of code might be interesting for you - even though these rarely include full projects.

EDIT: Also alternatively, you might take something like linux kernel, but instead of trying to understand everything try to

get the big picture
then concentrate on one tiny piece of it and inspect how the code changed over time (and for what reasons - it should be quite well documented)

What open source C projects are worth studying for learning good design?

6 Answers6

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