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5.7. Interesting and Important Libraries

Table 5-2 lists some significant libraries included with Mac OS X and Table 5-3 lists some significant libraries that do not come with Mac OS X (but are available through Fink).

Table 5-2. Important Mac OS X libraries

Library

Description

Headers

libalias

A packet aliasing library for masquerading and network address translation

Not included in Mac OS X. See the network_cmds module in the Darwin CVS archive.

libl.a

The lex runtime library

Not applicable. Lexical analyzers that you generate with lex have all the necessary definitions.

libMallocDebug

A library for the MallocDebug utility (/Developer/Applications)

Not applicable.You don't need to do anything special with your code to use this utility.

libncurses(libcurses is available for backward compatibility.)

The new curses screen library, a set of functions for controlling a terminal's display screen

/usr/include/ncurses.h (curses.h is available for backward compatibility.)

libobjc

The library for the GNU Objective-C compiler

/usr/include/objc/*

libpcap

Packet capture library

/usr/include/pcap*

libssl and libcrypto

An OpenSSL: Open Source toolkit implementing the Secure Sockets Layer (SSL v2/v3) and Transport Layer Security (TLS v1) protocols, as well as a full-strength, general-purpose cryptography library

/usr/include/openssl/*

libtcl

The Tcl runtime library

/usr/include/tcl.h

liby.a

The yacc runtime library

Not applicable. Parsers that you generate with yacc have all the necessary definitions.

libz

A general-purpose data-compression library (Zlib)

zlib.h

Table 5-3. Libraries that are missing from Mac OS X

Fink package

Description

Home page

aalib

ASCII art library

http://aa-project.sourceforge.net/aalib

db3

Berkeley DB embedded database

http://www.sleepycat.com/

db4

Berkeley DB embedded database

http://www.sleepycat.com/

dlcompat

Dynamic loading compatibility library

http://fink.sourceforge.net

dtdparser

Java DTD Parser

http://www.wutka.com/dtdparser.html

expat

C library for parsing XML

http://expat.sf.net

fnlib

Font rendering library for X11

http://www.enlightenment.org/

freetype

TrueType font rendering library, version 1

http://www.freetype.org/

freetype2

TrueType font rendering library, version 2

http://www.freetype.org/

gc

General-purpose garbage collection library

http://www.hpl.hp.com/personal/Hans_Boehm/gc/

gd

Graphics generation library

http://www.boutell.com/gd/

gdal

Translator for raster geospatial data formats

http://www.remotesensing.org/gdal/

gdbm

GNU dbm

http://www.gnu.org

giflib

GIF image format handling library, LZW-enabled version

http://prtr-13.ucsc.edu/~badger/software/libungif/

glib

Low-level library that supports GTK+ and GNOME

http://www.gtk.org/

gmp

GNU multiple precision arithmetic library

http://www.swox.com/gmp/

gnomelibs

GNOME libraries

http://www.gnome.org

gnujaxp

Basic XML processing in Java

http://www.gnu.org/software/classpathx/jaxp

gtk

GTK+, the GIMP widget toolkit used by GNOME

http://www.gtk.org/

hermes

Optimized pixel format conversion library

http://www.clanlib.org/hermes/

imlib

General image handling library

http://www.enlightenment.org/pages/imlib2.html

libdivxdecore

OpenDivX codec

http://www.projectmayo.com/projects/detail.php?projectId=4

libdnet

Networking library

http://libdnet.sourceforge.net/

libdockapp

Library that eases the creation of WindowMaker Dock applets

ftp://shadowmere.student.utwente.nl/pub/WindowMaker/

libdv

Software decoder for DV format video

http://www.sourceforge.net/projects/libdv/

libfame

Fast Assembly Mpeg Encoding library

http://fame.sourceforge.net/

libghttp

HTTP client library

http://www.gnome.org/

libiconv

Character set conversion library

http://www.gnu.org/software/libiconv/

libiodbc

ODBC libraries

http://www.mysql.com/

libjconv

Japanese code conversion library

http://ghost.math.sci.hokudai.ac.jp/misc/libjconv/

libjpeg

JPEG image format handling library

http://www.ijg.org/

libmpeg

GIMP MPEG library

http://www.gimp.org

libmusicbrainz

Client library for the MusicBrainz CD Index

http://www.musicbrainz.org

libnasl

Nessus Attack Scripting Language

http://www.nessus.org/

libnessus

Libraries package for Nessus without SSL support

http://www.nessus.org/

libole2

Library for the OLE2 compound file format

http://www.gnome.org/

libpoll

System V poll(2) Emulation Library

http://fink.sourceforge.net

libproplist

Routines for string list handling

http://www.windowmaker.org/

libshout

Library for streaming to icecast

http://developer.icecast.org/libshout/

libsigc++

Callback system for widget libraries

http://developer.icecast.org/libshout/

libstroke

Translates mouse strokes to program commands

http://www.etla.net/libstroke/

libtiff

TIFF image format library

http://www.libtiff.org/

libungif

GIF image format handling library, LZW-free version

http://prtr-13.ucsc.edu/~badger/software/libungif/index.shtml

libunicode

Low-level Unicode processing library

http://www.sourceforge.net/projects/libunicode/

libwww

General-purpose Web API written in C for Unix and Windows

http://www.w3c.org/Library/Distribution.html

libxml

XML parsing library

http://www.gnome.org/

libxml++

C++ interface to the libxml2 XML parsing library

http://sourceforge.net/projects/libxmlplusplus/

libxml2

XML parsing library, version 2

http://www.xmlsoft.org/

libxpg4

Locale-enabling preload library

http://www.darwinfo.org/devlist.php3?number=9143

libxslt

XSLT library

http://www.xmlsoft.org/XSLT/

log4j

Library that helps the programmer output log statements to a variety of output targets

http://jakarta.apache.org/log4j

lzo

Real-time data compression library

http://www.oberhumer.com/opensource/lzo

neon

HTTP/WebDAV client library with a C API

http://www.webdav.org/neon/

netpbm

Graphics manipulation programs and libraries

http://netpbm.sourceforge.net

pcre

Perl Compatible Regular Expressions library

http://www.pcre.org

pdflib

A library for generating PDFs

http://www.pdflib.com/pdflib

pil

The Python Imaging Library; adds image-processing capabilities to Python

http://www.pythonware.com/products/pil

pilot-link

Palm libraries

http://www.pilot-link.org/

popt

Library for parsing command-line options

http://www.gnu.org/directory/popt.html

pth

Portable library that provides scheduling

http://www.gnu.org/software/pth/pth.html

readline

Terminal input library

http://cnswww.cns.cwru.edu/~chet/readline/rltop.html

slang

Embeddable extension language and console I/O library

http://space.mit.edu/~davis/slang/

stlport

ANSI C++ Standard Library implementation

http://www.stlport.org/

The list of available libraries is ever-growing, thanks to an influx of open source ports from FreeBSD and Linux. One of the best ways to keep on top of the latest ports is to install Fink (see Section 6.1 in Chapter 6), which lets you install precompiled versions of libraries and applications or install them from source.



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