Original author(s) | Cygnus Support |
---|---|
Developer(s) | Red Hat |
Stable release | 4.4.0 / December 31, 2023 [1] |
Repository | |
Operating system | Cross-platform [ citation needed ] |
Type | Runtime library |
License | Various MIT/BSD-like licenses |
Website | www |
Newlib is a C standard library implementation intended for use on embedded systems. It is a conglomeration of several library parts, all under free software licenses that make them easily usable on embedded products.
It was created by Cygnus Support as part of building the first GNU cross-development toolchains. It is now maintained by Red Hat developers Jeff Johnston and Corinna Vinschen, and is used in most commercial and non-commercial GCC ports for non-Linux embedded systems.
The section System Calls [2] of the Newlib documentation describes how it can be used with many operating systems. Its primary use is on embedded systems that lack any kind of operating system; in that case it calls a board support package that can do things like write a byte of output on a serial port, or read a sector from a disk or other memory device.
Newlib is included in commercial GCC distributions by Atollic, CodeSourcery, Code Red, KPIT, Red Hat and others, and receives support from major embedded-processor architecture vendors such as ARM and Renesas. It is used as the standard C library in Cygwin, as well as being one standard C library among several for AmigaOS 4.
As of 2004 [update] , KallistiOS, an independent SDK targeting the Sega Dreamcast, has used Newlib as its standard C library, shipping it with many commercial titles on the platform. [3]
As of 2007 [update] , devkitARM and devkitPPC, toolchains targeted at homebrew development for commercial game systems, include Newlib as their C library. The Open-R SDK for Sony AIBO is also based on Newlib on top of the non-Unix Aperios.
As of 2013 [update] , Google Native Client SDK (NaCl) includes Newlib as the default C library over glibc. [4]
In 2019, Keith Packard released Picolibc, [5] a library offering standard C library APIs that targets small embedded systems with limited RAM, based on blending code from Newlib and AVR Libc.
Cygwin is a free and open-source Unix-like environment and command-line interface for Microsoft Windows. The project also provides a software repository containing many open-source packages. Cygwin allows source code for Unix-like operating systems to be compiled and run on Windows. Cygwin provides native integration of Windows-based applications.
In computing, the Executable and Linkable Format, is a common standard file format for executable files, object code, shared libraries, and core dumps. First published in the specification for the application binary interface (ABI) of the Unix operating system version named System V Release 4 (SVR4), and later in the Tool Interface Standard, it was quickly accepted among different vendors of Unix systems. In 1999, it was chosen as the standard binary file format for Unix and Unix-like systems on x86 processors by the 86open project.
The GNU Compiler Collection (GCC) is a collection of compilers from the GNU Project that support various programming languages, hardware architectures and operating systems. The Free Software Foundation (FSF) distributes GCC as free software under the GNU General Public License. GCC is a key component of the GNU toolchain which is used for most projects related to GNU and the Linux kernel. With roughly 15 million lines of code in 2019, GCC is one of the biggest free programs in existence. It has played an important role in the growth of free software, as both a tool and an example.
Red Hat Linux was a widely used commercial open-source Linux distribution created by Red Hat until its discontinuation in 2004.
Linux From Scratch (LFS) is a type of a Linux installation and the name of a book written by Gerard Beekmans, and as of May 2021, mainly maintained by Bruce Dubbs. The book gives readers instructions on how to build a Linux system from source. The book is available freely from the Linux From Scratch site.
A cross compiler is a compiler capable of creating executable code for a platform other than the one on which the compiler is running. For example, a compiler that runs on a PC but generates code that runs on Android devices is a cross compiler.
The GNU C Library, commonly known as glibc, is the GNU Project implementation of the C standard library. It is a wrapper around the system calls of the Linux kernel for application use. Despite its name, it now also directly supports C++. It was started in the 1980s by the Free Software Foundation (FSF) for the GNU operating system.
The C standard library or libc is the standard library for the C programming language, as specified in the ISO C standard. Starting from the original ANSI C standard, it was developed at the same time as the C library POSIX specification, which is a superset of it. Since ANSI C was adopted by the International Organization for Standardization, the C standard library is also called the ISO C library.
The GNU toolchain is a broad collection of programming tools produced by the GNU Project. These tools form a toolchain used for developing software applications and operating systems.
LLVM is a set of compiler and toolchain technologies that can be used to develop a frontend for any programming language and a backend for any instruction set architecture. LLVM is designed around a language-independent intermediate representation (IR) that serves as a portable, high-level assembly language that can be optimized with a variety of transformations over multiple passes. The name LLVM originally stood for Low Level Virtual Machine, though the project has expanded and the name is no longer officially an initialism.
In computing, uClibc is a small C standard library intended for Linux kernel-based operating systems for embedded systems and mobile devices. uClibc was written to support μClinux, a version of Linux not requiring a memory management unit and thus suited for microcontrollers.
The GNU Assembler, commonly known as gas or as, is the assembler developed by the GNU Project. It is the default back-end of GCC. It is used to assemble the GNU operating system and the Linux kernel, and various other software. It is a part of the GNU Binutils package.
The MicroBlaze is a soft microprocessor core designed for Xilinx field-programmable gate arrays (FPGA). As a soft-core processor, MicroBlaze is implemented entirely in the general-purpose memory and logic fabric of Xilinx FPGAs.
V850 is a 32-bit RISC CPU architecture produced by Renesas Electronics for embedded microcontrollers. It was designed by NEC as a replacement for their earlier NEC V60 family, and was introduced shortly before NEC sold their designs to Renesas in the early 1990s. It has continued to be developed by Renesas as of 2018.
Linux is a family of open-source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991, by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged as a Linux distribution (distro), which includes the kernel and supporting system software and libraries, many of which are provided by the GNU Project. Many Linux distributions use the word "Linux" in their name, but the Free Software Foundation uses and recommends the name "GNU/Linux" to emphasize the use and importance of GNU software in many distributions, causing some controversy.
LatticeMico32 is a 32-bit microprocessor reduced instruction set computer (RISC) soft core from Lattice Semiconductor optimized for field-programmable gate arrays (FPGAs). It uses a Harvard architecture, which means the instruction and data buses are separate. Bus arbitration logic can be used to combine the two buses, if desired.
Google Native Client (NaCl) is a discontinued sandboxing technology for running either a subset of Intel x86, ARM, or MIPS native code, or a portable executable, in a sandbox. It allows safely running native code from a web browser, independent of the user operating system, allowing web apps to run at near-native speeds, which aligns with Google's plans for ChromeOS. It may also be used for securing browser plugins, and parts of other applications or full applications such as ZeroVM.
Bionic is an implementation of the standard C library, developed by Google for its Android operating system. It differs from the GNU C Library (glibc) in being designed for devices with less memory and processor power than a typical Linux system. It is a combination of new code and code from FreeBSD, NetBSD, and OpenBSD released under a BSD license, rather than glibc, which uses the GNU Lesser General Public License. This difference was important in the early days of Android, when static linking was common, and since bionic has its own ABI, it can't be replaced by a different libc without breaking all existing apps.
musl is a C standard library intended for operating systems based on the Linux kernel, released under the MIT License. It was developed by Rich Felker to write a clean, efficient, and standards-conformant libc implementation.