Table of Contents Categories
  Encyclosphere.org ENCYCLOREADER
  supported by EncyclosphereKSF

Musl

Topic: Software

 From HandWiki - Reading time: 5 min

musl
Developer(s)Rich Felker (dalias) and others
Initial releaseFebruary 11, 2011; 15 years ago (2011-02-11)[1]
Stable release
1.2.6[2] / March 20, 2026; 23 days ago (2026-03-20)
Operating systemLinux 2.6 or later
Platformx86, x86 64, ARM, loongarch64, MIPS, Microblaze, PowerPC, powerpc64, x32, RISC-V, OpenRISC, s390x, SuperH
Type
LicenseMIT License
Websitemusl.libc.org

musl is a C standard library intended for operating systems based on the Linux kernel, released under the MIT License.[3] It was developed by Rich Felker to write a clean, efficient, and standards-conformant libc implementation.[4]

Overview

musl was designed from scratch to allow efficient static linking and to have realtime-quality robustness by avoiding race conditions, internal failures on resource exhaustion, and various other bad worst-case behaviors present in existing implementations.[4] The dynamic runtime is a single file with stable ABI allowing race-free updates and the static linking support allows an application to be deployed as a single portable binary without significant size overhead.

It claims compatibility with the POSIX 2008 specification and the C11 standard. It also implements most of the widely used non-standard Linux, BSD, and glibc functions.[5] There is partial ABI compatibility with the part of glibc required by Linux Standard Base.Cite error: Closing </ref> missing for <ref> tag more conformant/strict than glibc), and version 1.2.1 "features the new 'mallocng' malloc implementation, replacing musl's original dlmalloc-like allocator that suffered from fundamental design problems."Cite error: Closing </ref> missing for <ref> tag

A modified version of musl is available for userspace code written for the seL4 microkernel[14], requiring users to implement the parts of the Linux system call interface that the subset of musl they wish to use depends on.

A modified musl wrapper is also utilized written for OpenHarmony distributed operating systems within its userspace for its standard system devices; while it primarily targets a Linux kernel, it employs a Kernel Abstraction Layer (KAL) to map extended POSIX system calls when running on non-Linux kernels of kernel agnostic core system, such as microkernel-based HarmonyOS's HongMeng Kernel Linux ABI compliant shim for POSIX-like functionalities.[15]

For binaries that have been linked against glibc, gcompat and[16] glibmus-hq[17] can be used to execute them on musl-based distros.

See also

References

  1. ↑ "musl - obsolete versions". 2017-10-31. https://www.musl-libc.org/oldversions.html.  >
  2. ↑ Cite error: Invalid <ref> tag; no text was provided for refs named RELEASES
  3. ↑ Rich Felker (2016-04-29). "COPYRIGHT". https://git.musl-libc.org/cgit/musl/tree/COPYRIGHT. 
  4. ↑ 4.0 4.1 "Introduction to musl". 2016-04-21. https://www.musl-libc.org/intro.html. 
  5. ↑ "Compatibility". 2014-05-27. http://wiki.musl-libc.org/wiki/Compatibility. 
  6. ↑ Larabel, Michael (30 September 2018). "Dragora 3.0 Alpha 2 Released As One Of The Libre GNU/Linux Platforms". Phoronix Media. https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=Dragora-3.0-Alpha-2. 
  7. ↑ "Additional stage downloads for amd64, ppc, x86, arm available". 20 July 2021. https://www.gentoo.org/news/2021/07/20/more-downloads.html. 
  8. ↑ Fietkau, Felix (16 Jun 2015). "OpenWrt switches to musl by default". http://permalink.gmane.org/gmane.comp.embedded.openwrt.devel/32651. 
  9. ↑ "About postmarketOS - postmarketOS Wiki". https://wiki.postmarketos.org/wiki/About_postmarketOS. 
  10. ↑ on GitHub
  11. ↑ "morpheus". https://morpheus.2f30.org/. 
  12. ↑ "Chimera Linux - About" (in en). https://chimera-linux.org/about/#alternative-userland. 
  13. ↑ "Enter the void". https://voidlinux.org/. 
  14. ↑ seL4/musllibc, seL4 microkernel and related repositories, 2020-08-30, https://github.com/seL4/musllibc, retrieved 2020-09-05 
  15. ↑ "A first look at app security on HarmonyOS NEXT" (in en). https://promon.io/security-news/harmonyos-next. 
  16. ↑ "Adélie Linux / gcompat" (in en). https://code.foxkit.us/adelie/gcompat. 
  17. ↑ "Manoel-linux-gitlab / GlibMus-HQ · GitLab". https://gitlab.com/manoel-linux1/GlibMus-HQ. 



Retrieved from "https://handwiki.org/wiki/index.php?title=Software:Musl&oldid=4292662"
Licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0 | Source: https://handwiki.org/wiki/Software:Musl
47 views | Status: cached on April 19 2026 21:55:44
↧ Download this article as ZWI file
Encyclosphere.org EncycloReader is supported by the EncyclosphereKSF