Extended C library utility

The extdc core library is made with care and is meant to simplify and improve C development. It's meant to be easily portable to new architecture and os. It was battle tested in the brutal-os, UEFI, barebone x86, risc-v, linux...

Origin

The extdc library was initially a utility library built for the Brutal operating system project, we have decided to extract the library to make it usable for other C project.

Because the library was exported from Brutal, we don't see the original contributors, I wanted to mention that @sleepy-monax did the majority of the code.

Demo of its feature:

Formatting library

The library has a formatting tool that doesn't allocate any memory, you can easily do:

#include <extdlib/io.h>
// ...
log$("hello {} n°{x}", "world", 10);

Here, we write to stdout, but you can easily use the io library to write to a file, memory, or anything else that can be casted to a Writer.

Result system

The language manages errors in a modern way. Each function can return a result like:

typedef Result(Error, float) DivResult;

// we use this to reuse the same error between function, 
// and to make the library user know what error may be expected when calling the function 
#define DIVISION_BY_ZERO_ERROR make_error(ERR_KIND_INVALID_PARAMS, "b == 0")

DivResult safe_div(int a, int b)
{   
    if(b == 0){
        return ERR(DivResult, DIVISION_BY_ZERO_ERROR);
    } 
    return OK(HeapResult, a/b);
}

The result system benefits of TRY macros that can be used inside expressions:

MaybeError complicated_math_func()
{
    float c = TRY(MaybeError, safe_div(10, 0)); // would return from complicated_math_func and make the parent function handle the error 
    // ...
}

Note: due to language limitation, we have to provide the return function type each time we call TRY and OK/ERR macros.

Fibers / Coroutines :

Our library provide the use of fibers (look like coroutine):

void* fiber_a(void* ctx){
    for(int i = 0; i < 100; i++){
        log$("fiber a: {}", i);
        fiber_yield();
    }
    return 0;
}

void* fiber_b(void* ctx){
    for(int i = 0; i < 100; i++){
        log$("fiber b: {}", i);
        fiber_yield();
    }
    return 0;
}

int main(){

    fiber_init_current();

    fiber_start_and_forget(fiber_a, NULL);
    fiber_start_and_forget(fiber_b, NULL);
    
    for(int i = 0; i < 100; i++){
        log$("main fiber: {}", i);
        fiber_yield();
    }
    return 0;
}

Would output:

main fiber: 0
fiber a: 0
fiber b: 0
main fiber: 1
// ...

This is only the surface of the library

Extdlib has a lot of different components meant to make the life easier:

• alloc: allocation system
• base: the root of all the system
• cli: abstraction of the terminal (clearing it, color changment)
• codec: tga, zlib ... extraction.
• debug: logging, and assertion
• ds: various datastructures: ring, slot, vectors, maps, bitmaps...
• fibers: coroutines
• gfx: a rasterizer
• hash: a hashing utility library
• input: abstraction of the mouse and keyboard
• io: file , channel, formatting... inspired by rust writer/reader
• math: a math utility library
• mem: a memory utility library
• parse: a lexer and parser library
• sync: synchronization library
• task: multitasking library
• tests: a unit testing library
• text: powerfull text manipulation (formatting, utf8, ...)
• time: take care of time
• ui: a pretty simple user interface library

Everything is implemented in C and requires clang or gcc (need to use statement expression).