SSC — Portable C Library

SSC is a cross-platform C library providing unified wrappers around POSIX and Win32 APIs for file operations, memory-mapped files, memory locking, aligned allocation, endianness conversion, command-line argument parsing, and more. It compiles on Linux, macOS, all major BSDs, and Windows with GCC, Clang, or MSVC.

Modules

Module	Description
File	File open, create, close, size queries, directory changes, secret files (Linux memfd)
MemMap	Memory-map files into RAM; supports read-only, secret, and resizeable maps
MemLock	Lock pages in physical memory to prevent swapping (Unix-like only)
Memory	Aligned allocation, page size queries, system memory info, endian-aware load/store
Operation	Byte rotation, XOR, constant-time comparison, secure zeroing
CommandLineArg	Structured short (-x) and long (--option) argument parsing with callbacks
Process	Query number of processors and executable path
Print	Format bytes as hex or binary with optional prefixes and newlines
Random	OS-backed pseudorandom entropy retrieval
SSC_String	Heap-allocated string type with metadata fields and secure-free support
Swap	Byte-swapping (16/32/64-bit) using GCC builtins, C++23 std::byteswap, or OS primitives
Terminal	Terminal control via ncurses (ENABLE_TERMINAL=ON)

Platforms & Compilers

Platform	Compilers	Minimum version
Linux (x86_64, ARM, RISC-V)	GCC, Clang	Any modern release
macOS / Darwin	GCC, Clang	Any supported Xcode
FreeBSD, OpenBSD, NetBSD, DragonFly BSD	GCC, Clang	Any supported release
Windows (x86_64)	MSVC	Visual Studio 2019 (v19.0)

C standard: C17. C++11 or higher is also supported via the C linkage wrapper in Macro.h.

Dependencies

Required: a C compiler and CMake >= 3.16.

Optional, enabled at build time:

• ncurses + tinfo — needed only when ENABLE_TERMINAL=ON (default). On Linux both packages are required; on macOS and BSDs only ncurses is needed.
• Lua 5.3 or 5.4 — set ENABLE_LUA=ON to include the Lua integration layer (Impl/Lua/).

Build Options

Option	Default	Description
BUILD_STATIC	OFF	Build a static library instead of shared
ENABLE_TERMINAL	ON	Include the Terminal (ncurses) module
MEMLOCK	OFF	Enable memory-locking support (SSC_EXTERN_MEMLOCK)
MEMLOCK_THREADSAFE	OFF	Make MemLock thread-safe when MEMLOCK=ON
ENABLE_LUA	OFF	Include the Lua integration layer
NATIVE_OPTIMIZE	OFF	Pass -march=native to GCC/Clang
ENDIAN	auto	Force byte order (little, big, or auto)

Building

cmake -S . -B build -DCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=Release
cmake --build build
cmake --install build                        # requires root or a custom CMAKE_INSTALL_PREFIX

Windows (MSVC)

Open an x64 Native Tools Command Prompt for VS 2022, then:

cmake -S . -B build -DCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=Release
cmake --build build --config Release
cmake --install build --config Release

Common cmake invocations

# Static library, no terminal, Lua enabled
cmake -S . -B build \
  -DBUILD_STATIC=ON \
  -DENABLE_TERMINAL=OFF \
  -DENABLE_LUA=ON

# Enable memory locking with thread safety (Linux / BSDs)
cmake -S . -B build -DMEMLOCK=ON -DMEMLOCK_THREADSAFE=ON

# Cross-compile for Windows on Linux via mingw-w64
cmake -S . -B build \
  -DCMAKE_TOOLCHAIN_FILE=mingw-w64-toolchain.cmake \
  -DCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=Release

Quick Start

#include <SSC/File.h>
#include <stdio.h>

int main(void) {
    if (SSC_FilePath_exists("/etc/hostname")) {
        printf("File exists.\n");
    }
    return 0;
}

Compile: cc -o example example.c -lSSC (or link the static archive).

License

BSD 2-clause. Copyright (c) 2020–2025 Stuart Calder. See the LICENSE file for full terms.