Cosmopolitan Libc makes C a build-once run-anywhere language, like Java, except it doesn't need an interpreter or virtual machine. Instead, it reconfigures stock GCC and Clang to output a POSIX-approved polyglot format that runs natively on Linux + Mac + Windows + FreeBSD + OpenBSD + NetBSD + BIOS with the best possible performance and the tiniest footprint imaginable.
For an introduction to this project, please read the αcτµαlly pδrταblε εxεcµταblε blog post and cosmopolitan libc website. We also have API documentation.
If you're doing your development work on Linux or BSD then you need just five files to get started:
wget https://justine.lol/cosmopolitan/cosmopolitan-amalgamation-0.2.zip
unzip cosmopolitan-amalgamation-0.2.zip
printf 'main() { printf("hello world\\n"); }\n' >hello.c
gcc -g -O -static -nostdlib -nostdinc -fno-pie -no-pie -mno-red-zone \
-o hello.com.dbg hello.c -fuse-ld=bfd -Wl,-T,ape.lds \
-include cosmopolitan.h crt.o ape.o cosmopolitan.a
objcopy -S -O binary hello.com.dbg hello.com
./hello.comIf you're developing on Windows or MacOS then you need to download an x86_64-pc-linux-gnu toolchain beforehand. See the Compiling on Windows tutorial. It's needed because the ELF object format is what makes universal binaries possible.
Cosmopolitan can also be compiled from source on any Linux distro.
wget https://justine.lol/cosmopolitan/cosmopolitan-0.2.tar.gz
tar xf cosmopolitan-0.2.tar.gz # see releases page
cd cosmopolitan-0.2
make -j16
o//examples/hello.com
find o -name \*.com | xargs ls -rShal | less| Platform | Min Version | Circa |
|---|---|---|
| AMD | K8 Venus | 2005 |
| Intel | Core | 2006 |
| New Technology | Vista | 2006 |
| GNU/Systemd | 2.6.18 | 2007 |
| XNU's Not UNIX | 15.6 | 2018 |
| FreeBSD | 12 | 2018 |
| OpenBSD | 6.4 | 2018 |
| NetBSD | 9.1 | 2020 |