LIBBSD(7) BSD Miscellaneous Information Manual LIBBSD(7)
NAME
libbsd -- utility functions from BSD systems
DESCRIPTION
The libbsd library provides a set if compatibility macros and functions
commonly found on BSD-based systems. Its purpose is to make those avail-
able on non-BSD based systems to ease portability.
The library can be used in an overlay mode, which is the preferred way,
so that the code is portable and requires no modification to the original
BSD code. This can be done easily with the pkg-config(3) library named
libbsd-overlay. Or by adding the system-specific include directory with
the bsd/ suffix to the list of system include paths. With gcc this could
be -isystem ${includedir}/bsd. In addition the LIBBSD_OVERLAY pre-pro-
cessor variable needs to be defined. The includes in this case should be
the usual system ones, such as <unistd.h>.
The other way to use the library is to use the namespaced headers, this
is less portable as it makes using libbsd mandatory and it will not work
on BSD-based systems, and requires modifying original BSD code. This can
be done with the pkg-config(3) library named libbsd. The includes in
this case should be namespaced with bsd/, such as <bsd/unistd.h>.
The package also provides a bsd-ctor static library that can be used to
inject automatic constructors into a program so that the setproctitle()
function gets invoked automatically at startup time. This can be done
with the pkg-config(3) library named libbsd-ctor.
HEADERS
The following are the headers provided by libbsd, that extend the stan-
dard system headers. They can work in normal or overlay modes, for the
former they need to be prefixed with bsd/.
<bitstring.h>
<err.h>
<getopt.h>
<libutil.h>
<md5.h>
<netinet/ip_icmp.h>
<nlist.h>
<readpassphrase.h>
<stdio.h>
<stdlib.h>
<string.h>
<stringlist.h>
<sys/bitstring.h>
<sys/cdefs.h>
<sys/endian.h>
<sys/poll.h>
<sys/queue.h>
<sys/time.h>
<sys/tree.h>
<timeconv.h>
<unistd.h>
<vis.h>
<wchar.h>
The following is a libbsd specific convenience header, that includes some
of the extended headers. It only works in non-overlay mode.
<bsd/bsd.h>
DEPRECATED
Some functions have been deprecated, they will emit warnings at compile
time and possibly while being linked at run-time. This might be due to
the functions not being portable at all to other systems, making the
package not buildable there; not portable in a correct or non-buggy way;
or because there are better more portable replacements now.
This is the list of currently deprecated macros and functions:
fgetln()
Unportable, requires assistance from the stdio layer. An implemen-
tation has to choose between leaking buffers or being reentrant for
a limited amount of streams (this implementation chose the latter
with a limit of 32). Use getline(3) instead, which is available in
many systems and required by IEEE Std 1003.1-2008 (``POSIX.1'').
funopen()
Unportable, requires assistance from the stdio layer or some hook
framework. On GNU systems the fopencookie() function can be used.
Otherwise the code needs to be prepared for neither of these func-
tions being available.
In addition, the MD5 set of digest funtions are now provided by the libmd
companion library, so it is advised to use that instead, as the ones pro-
vided in libbsd might disappear on the next SONAME bump.
SEE ALSO
arc4random(3bsd), bitstring(3bsd), byteorder(3bsd), closefrom(3bsd),
errc(3bsd), expand_number(3bsd), explicit_bzero(3bsd), fgetln(3bsd),
fgetwln(3bsd), flopen(3bsd), fmtcheck(3bsd), fparseln(3bsd),
fpurge(3bsd), funopen(3bsd), getbsize(3bsd), getpeereid(3bsd),
getprogname(3bsd), heapsort(3bsd), humanize_number(3bsd), md5(3bsd),
nlist(3bsd), pidfile(3bsd), queue(3bsd), radixsort(3bsd),
readpassphrase(3bsd), reallocarray(3bsd), reallocf(3bsd), setmode(3bsd),
setproctitle(3bsd), stringlist(3bsd), strlcpy(3bsd), strmode(3bsd),
strnstr(3bsd), strtonum(3bsd), timeradd(3bsd), timeval(3bsd), tree(3bsd),
unvis(3bsd), vis(3bsd), wcslcpy(3bsd).
HISTORY
The libbsd project started in the Debian GNU/kFreeBSD port as a way to
ease porting code from FreeBSD to the GNU-based system. Pretty early on
it was generalized and a project created on FreeDesktop.org for other
distributions and projects to use.
It is now distributed as part of most non-BSD distributions.
BSD May 31 2017 BSD