1LIBBSD(7) BSD Miscellaneous Information Manual LIBBSD(7)
2
4 libbsd — utility functions from BSD systems
5
7 The libbsd library provides a set if compatibility macros and functions
8 commonly found on BSD-based systems. Its purpose is to make those avail‐
9 able on non-BSD based systems to ease portability.
10 The library can be used in an overlay mode, which is the preferred way,
12 so that the code is portable and requires no modification to the original
13 BSD code. This can be done easily with the pkg-config(3) library named
14 libbsd-overlay. Or by adding the system-specific include directory with
15 the bsd/ suffix to the list of system include paths. With gcc this could
16 be -isystem ${includedir}/bsd. In addition the LIBBSD_OVERLAY pre-pro‐
17 cessor variable needs to be defined. The includes in this case should be
18 the usual system ones, such as <unistd.h>.
19 The other way to use the library is to use the namespaced headers, this
21 is less portable as it makes using libbsd mandatory and it will not work
22 on BSD-based systems, and requires modifying original BSD code. This can
23 be done with the pkg-config(3) library named libbsd. The includes in
24 this case should be namespaced with bsd/, such as <bsd/unistd.h>.
25 The package also provides a bsd-ctor static library that can be used to
27 inject automatic constructors into a program so that the setproctitle()
28 function gets invoked automatically at startup time. This can be done
29 with the pkg-config(3) library named libbsd-ctor.
30
32 The following are the headers provided by libbsd, that extend the stan‐
33 dard system headers. They can work in normal or overlay modes, for the
34 former they need to be prefixed with bsd/.
35 <bitstring.h>
37 <err.h>
38 <getopt.h>
39 <inttypes.h>
40 <libutil.h>
41 <md5.h>
42 <netinet/ip_icmp.h>
43 <nlist.h>
44 <readpassphrase.h>
45 <stdio.h>
46 <stdlib.h>
47 <string.h>
48 <stringlist.h>
49 <sys/bitstring.h>
50 <sys/cdefs.h>
51 <sys/endian.h>
52 <sys/poll.h>
53 <sys/queue.h>
54 <sys/time.h>
55 <sys/tree.h>
56 <timeconv.h>
57 <unistd.h>
58 <vis.h>
59 <wchar.h>
60 The following is a libbsd specific convenience header, that includes some
62 of the extended headers. It only works in non-overlay mode.
63 <bsd/bsd.h>
65
67 Some functions have been deprecated, they will emit warnings at compile
68 time and possibly while being linked at run-time. This might be due to
69 the functions not being portable at all to other systems, making the
70 package not buildable there; not portable in a correct or non-buggy way;
71 or because there are better more portable replacements now.
72 This is the list of currently deprecated macros and functions:
74 fgetln()
76 Unportable, requires assistance from the stdio layer. An implemen‐
77 tation has to choose between leaking buffers or being reentrant for
78 a limited amount of streams (this implementation chose the latter
79 with a limit of 32). Use getline(3) instead, which is available in
80 many systems and required by IEEE Std 1003.1-2008 (“POSIX.1”).
81 fgetwln()
83 Unportable, requires assistance from the stdio layer. An implemen‐
84 tation has to choose between leaking buffers or being reentrant for
85 a limited amount of streams (this implementation chose the latter
86 with a limit of 32). Use fgetwc(3) instead, which is available in
87 many systems and required by ISO/IEC 9899:1999 (“ISO C99”) and IEEE
88 Std 1003.1-2001 (“POSIX.1”).
89 funopen()
91 Unportable, requires assistance from the stdio layer or some hook
92 framework. On GNU systems the fopencookie() function can be used.
93 Otherwise the code needs to be prepared for neither of these func‐
94 tions being available.
95
97 Some functions have been superseded by implementations in other system
98 libraries, and might disappear on the next SONAME bump, assuming those
99 other implementation have widespread deployment, or the implementations
100 are present in all major libc for example.
101 MD5Init()
103 MD5Update()
104 MD5Pad()
105 MD5Final()
106 MD5Transform()
107 MD5End()
108 MD5File()
109 MD5FileChunk()
110 MD5Data()
111 The set of MD5 digest functions are now provided by the libmd com‐
112 panion library, so it is advised to use that instead.
113 explicit_bzero()
114 This function is provided by glibc 2.25.
115 reallocarray()
116 This function is provided by glibc 2.26.
117
119 arc4random(3bsd), bitstring(3bsd), byteorder(3bsd), closefrom(3bsd),
120 errc(3bsd), expand_number(3bsd), explicit_bzero(3bsd), fgetln(3bsd),
121 fgetwln(3bsd), flopen(3bsd), fmtcheck(3bsd), fparseln(3bsd),
122 fpurge(3bsd), funopen(3bsd), getbsize(3bsd), getpeereid(3bsd),
123 getprogname(3bsd), heapsort(3bsd), humanize_number(3bsd), md5(3bsd),
124 nlist(3bsd), pidfile(3bsd), queue(3bsd), radixsort(3bsd),
125 readpassphrase(3bsd), reallocarray(3bsd), reallocf(3bsd), setmode(3bsd),
126 setproctitle(3bsd), stringlist(3bsd), strlcpy(3bsd), strmode(3bsd),
127 strnstr(3bsd), strtoi(3bsd), strtonum(3bsd), strtou(3bsd),
128 timeradd(3bsd), timeval(3bsd), tree(3bsd), unvis(3bsd), vis(3bsd),
129 wcslcpy(3bsd).
130
132 The libbsd project started in the Debian GNU/kFreeBSD port as a way to
133 ease porting code from FreeBSD to the GNU-based system. Pretty early on
134 it was generalized and a project created on FreeDesktop.org for other
135 distributions and projects to use.
136 It is now distributed as part of most non-BSD distributions.
138BSD May 21 2018 BSD