libev

Libev

libev is a high-performance event loop/event model library written in C. It allows asynchronous events and callbacks to be registered and handled efficiently in applications. libev supports various event notification interfaces like timers, signals, sockets, pipes, and more.
libev screenshot

libev: High-Performance Event Loop Library

libev is a high-performance event loop/event model library written in C, supporting timers, signals, sockets, pipes and more for efficient asynchronous event handling.

What is Libev?

libev is a high-performance event loop/event model library written in C. It provides an efficient, priority-based callback scheduling mechanism that allows applications to register interest in certain events and respond to them asynchronously when they occur.

Some key capabilities and features of libev include:

  • High-performance event loop based on efficient state machines and linked lists for time-ordered event processing
  • Supports various event notification interfaces like timers, signals, sockets, pipes, and more
  • Lightweight - designed to have a small footprint and minimal external dependencies
  • Portable - works across POSIX platforms like Linux, macOS, *BSD
  • Integrates easily into applications and other event loops/libraries
  • Priority-based callback execution for accurate timing of events
  • Support for one-shot, periodic, and repeating events/timers
  • Integrated fork handling for safe post-fork event handling

libev is very useful for developing highly concurrent network services, real-time apps, client/server software, audio/video frameworks, emulators, and other event-driven use cases where scalability and accurate event timing are critical.

Libev Features

Features

  1. High-performance event loop
  2. Efficient handling of asynchronous events and callbacks
  3. Supports various event notification interfaces like timers, signals, sockets, pipes, etc
  4. Portable - works on many Unix-like platforms and Windows
  5. Lightweight and low resource usage

Pricing

  • Open Source

Pros

Very fast and low latency

Clean and simple API

Supports many types of I/O events

Actively maintained and updated

Wide language support via bindings - can be used from C, Python, Perl, etc

Cons

Lower-level API may have a learning curve

No built-in support for networking protocols

Requires integration with external libraries for some features

Limited documentation and resources compared to other event loops

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