The GNU C Library project provides the core libraries for the GNU system and GNU/Linux systems, as well as many other systems that use Linux as the kernel. These libraries provide critical APIs including ISO C11, POSIX.1-2008, BSD, OS-specific APIs and more. These APIs include such foundational facilities as open, read, write, malloc, printf, getaddrinfo, dlopen, pthread_create, crypt, login, exit and more.
The GNU C Library is designed to be a backwards compatible, portable, and high performance ISO C library. It aims to follow all relevant standards including ISO C11, POSIX.1-2008, and IEEE 754-2008.
The project was started circa 1988 and is more than 30 years old. You can see the complete project release history on the wiki.
Despite the project's age there is still a lot to do so please Get Started and Get Involved!
You can contact the developer community by emailing the developer list libc-alpha@sourceware.org.
You can privately contact the project stewards by emailing libc-maintainers@gnu.org.
The GNU C Library releases every 6 months. See the NEWS file in the glibc sources for more information.
2023-07-31: glibc 2.38 released.
2023-02-01: glibc 2.37 released.
2022-08-01: glibc 2.36 released.
2022-02-03: glibc 2.35 released.
2021-08-01: glibc 2.34 released.
2021-02-01: glibc 2.33 released.
The GNU C Library is currently maintained by a community of developers many of whom are listed on the MAINTAINERS page of the project wiki.
Many others have contributed as documented in the glibc manual under: Contributors.
Thank you to all who have contributed, either in bug reports, or by answering a question, your help is appreciated.