cdin-kernel

cdin-kernel is a portable C11 library for binary-safe text editing. It provides document handles, edits, undo/redo, transactions, immutable snapshots, text-position helpers, literal/byte search, and change notifications through a stable C ABI.

Install

Download the package for your platform from the project's GitHub Releases page, extract it, and run the included installer:

• Linux/macOS: ./install.sh --prefix "$HOME/.local"
• Windows: run ./install.ps1 in PowerShell. The release package targets 64-bit MinGW-w64 UCRT64.

The public header is cdin/kernel.h. In C or C++, include it with:

#include <cdin/kernel.h>

After installation, compile a program with pkg-config:

cc app.c $(pkg-config --cflags --libs cdin-kernel) -o app

See the user guide for a complete example and installation for static/shared linking, custom prefixes, and release packages.

Development workflow

The repository uses PSX for its small C-library project rules, Pipeline for the shared local/CI task graph, and gix for branch flow. Run psx check and pipeline run check locally. After making the first Git commit on main, run bash scripts/init-git-flow.sh to initialize gix and create develop.

Build instructions

GNU/Linux

Install a C compiler and Make, then build and test:

sudo apt-get install build-essential cmake git pkg-config
make deps                 # installs the pinned m-mdy-m/log.c dependency locally
make all shared quickstart
make check
sudo make install

Supported release architectures are x86-64 and ARM64.

macOS

Install the Xcode Command Line Tools, CMake, and Git, then run:

make deps
make all shared quickstart
make check
sudo make install

Release packages are available for Intel (x86-64) and Apple silicon (ARM64).

Windows (64-bit)

Install MSYS2 and use its UCRT64 terminal. Install the MinGW-w64 GCC, Make, CMake, and Git packages, then run:

make deps
make all shared quickstart
make check
make PREFIX=/ucrt64 install

The published Windows package targets MinGW-w64 UCRT64; MSVC compatibility is not claimed. A 32-bit Windows build is not currently published.

GNU/Linux with Docker

A multi-architecture SDK image is published to Docker Hub for linux/amd64 and linux/arm64. Replace bitsgenix with the account that publishes the image:

docker pull bitsgenix/cdin-kernel:latest
docker run --rm -it -v "$PWD:/workspace" bitsgenix/cdin-kernel:latest

The image includes the public headers, cdin-kernel and m-mdy-m/log.c static libraries, GCC, Make, CMake, and pkg-config. Use it as a build environment for applications that link against cdin-kernel; it is not an application image. See Container builds.

Examples and documentation

• Examples index
• C quickstart
• User guide
• C ABI reference
• Language bindings
• Installation and build
• Architecture
• Developer guide

Third-party

• C standard library — provided by the target platform.
• POSIX Threads (pthread) — system library used on Unix-like builds; not bundled.
• Unicode tables — generated into the source tree from Python's unicodedata and the third-party regex module. These Python packages are only needed to regenerate the tables, not to build or run the library. See tools/gen_unicode.py for data provenance and limitations.
• m-mdy-m/log.c — pinned C11 logging library (MIT), installed separately into the local .deps/ prefix by make deps; the kernel links the static library and exposes it as a private transitive dependency to static consumers. Its source is kept under build/deps/, never copied into src/.
• Build tools — a C11 compiler, Make, Git, CMake, pkg-config, and an archiver (ar) are required to build from source.

License

GPL-3.0-or-later. See LICENSE.