[HN Gopher] Musl: List of alternative libs that are lightweight,...
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       Musl: List of alternative libs that are lightweight, not bloated
       and efficient
        
       Author : _benj
       Score  : 52 points
       Date   : 2023-07-21 12:39 UTC (10 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (wiki.musl-libc.org)
 (TXT) w3m dump (wiki.musl-libc.org)
        
       | pipeline_peak wrote:
       | Honestly not trying to troll, if you're trying to avoid bloat
       | shouldn't you go with C instead of C++.
       | 
       | At some point you're going to run into virtual tables among other
       | overhead.
        
         | mike_hock wrote:
         | You run into virtual tables more often in C because you can't
         | build an abstraction otherwise, whereas in C++ it could be
         | inlined.
         | 
         | Example: Callbacks in C are always virtual, whereas in C++ you
         | can take the callback as a template parameter.
         | 
         | Not distinguishing between "virtual" or "function pointer" or
         | any other names for the same concept (dynamic call address).
        
         | dundarious wrote:
         | Your general point is in agreement with the article then.
        
         | SubjectToChange wrote:
         | Less "bloat" doesn't mean more performance. C++ libraries have
         | soundly beaten their C counterparts in HPC, HFT, ML, etc. And
         | in any case it is still possible to write a C-dialect in C++ if
         | you so choose.
        
           | pipeline_peak wrote:
           | I was referring to bloat as in memory usage.
           | 
           | A quick glance at Moe, I see inheritance in something as
           | fundamental as buffers.
        
             | SubjectToChange wrote:
             | Again, you can write a C89 (even more with C++20) dialect
             | _in C++_. There's practically nothing C can do that C++
             | can't. Also, the fact that the linked page recommends
             | tinycc and pcc pretty much proves they don't care about
             | performance _or_ memory usage.
        
       | Y_Y wrote:
       | Great case for an Oxford comma here
        
         | _benj wrote:
         | hehe! ESL is strong with this one :-)
        
           | _benj wrote:
           | Funny to get downvoted for a tongue-in-cheek self-deprecating
           | joke about your own sentence!
        
         | chmaynard wrote:
         | I'll take a bloated and efficient library any day.
        
       | mike_hock wrote:
       | Not fixing an unchecked malloc failure in an ncurses alternative
       | gets you struck out on the list, but having unpatched
       | vulnerabilities in a crypto library doesn't.
       | 
       | Also, the link to uSTL is dead.
        
       | SubjectToChange wrote:
       | What is the best piece of software the musl/suckless/cat-v crowd
       | have to offer? They smugly moan about the state of modern
       | software but only manage to write alternatives to relatively
       | trivial programs. For instance, it's ridiculous to recommend
       | tinycc or pcc as an alternative to GCC or Clang.
        
         | sebastiandb wrote:
         | You're right, but that's kind of the point of suckless. To
         | them, we should all be using software that is small, self-
         | contained, and simple in implementation; both GCC and Clang are
         | too complex in that case. C++ itself sucks to them, so g++ and
         | clang++ don't need alternatives anyway.
         | 
         | Sometimes, it would mean separating what one piece of software
         | does into many in order to replicate what that one complex
         | thing does.
         | 
         | I don't subscribe to their philosophy, by the way. "Good"
         | software which is elegant and easy to use is often very
         | complicated in implementation.
        
         | _benj wrote:
         | musl itself, busybox let's you have a full unix set of tools
         | for 700kb, which is awesome for embedded Linux. There's also
         | dropbear, and ssh/sshd implementation in about 110kb binary. So
         | when talking about bloat in embedded, it something very
         | measurable when the option is a 32MB NOR flash chip for the
         | root file system
        
         | dduong wrote:
         | dwm is nice. I enjoyed using it for a while.
        
           | SubjectToChange wrote:
           | I'll assume dwm is great and all, but I feel like that just
           | proves my point.
        
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       (page generated 2023-07-21 23:02 UTC)