clib¶

ID: clib
Link: Repository
Upstream stars: ⭐ 5,144
Last commit: 2026-07-18
Platforms: 🐧 Linux · 🍎 macOS
Operations: search · install · remove
purl types: pkg:clib/
CLI name: clib
Issues and PRs: 📦 manager: clib
Source: clib.toml

clib is the package manager of the C ecosystem, distributing small libraries and standalone programs.

Parsing notes, verified against clib 2.8.7 on macOS:

install forces --global. Without it clib vendors sources into a deps/ directory relative to the working directory, which is a project operation rather than a machine-wide one; --global installs to the prefix instead.
No inventory: clib ships no list command of any kind, so installed and outdated are not declared and mpm auto-skips them. What remains is still more than the competing wrappers offer, none of which reach clib at all.
upgrade is not declared either. clib upgrade upgrades clib itself to a given version rather than any package, and clib update re-fetches packages into the project deps/ directory, so neither is a package upgrade.
Every operation keys on the owner/repo slug. search reports it as repo, install takes it directly, and uninstall parses it back apart through parse_repo_owner/parse_repo_name (src/clib-uninstall.c), so one id feeds all three.
The registry carries no versions at all, only names, URLs and descriptions, so search results are yielded version-less. The description is dropped too: the definition schema only maps package_id, installed_version and latest_version, so a class would be needed to carry it, which is not worth the weight for one cosmetic column.

What `mpm` adds to `clib`¶

Through mpm, clib gains --exact and --extended search, to narrow to exact names or match descriptions.

Bigger still, mpm reaches across every manager at once: mpm installed and mpm outdated cover clib alongside every other manager you run in one table, mpm upgrade --all updates them together, and mpm sbom exports the whole machine as one bill of materials.

Every mpm command also gains --dry-run and --plan previews, cross-scheme version comparison and purl identifiers. See manager augmentations for how each one is built.

Your `clib` commands, in `mpm`¶

You already know clib: each operation maps one-to-one onto mpm, in an interface shared by every manager.

To…	With `clib`	With `mpm`
Search for a package	`clib search --json --no-color <query>`	`mpm --clib search <query>`
Install a package	`clib install --global <package_id>`	`mpm install pkg:clib/<package_id>`
Remove a package	`clib uninstall <package_id>`	`mpm remove pkg:clib/<package_id>`

Prefix any command above with --dry-run to simulate the underlying manager calls without touching the system: the safe way to watch what mpm would do before trusting it.

Operations¶

Operation	Supported	Notes
`installed`
`outdated`
`orphans`
`search`	✅	Exact and extended search backfilled by `mpm`.
`install`	✅
`upgrade`
`upgrade_all`
`remove`	✅
`sync`
`cleanup`
`doctor`

Configuration¶

Ignore clib on the mpm CLI by passing the --no-clib option.
Ignore it for every run in your configuration:
```
[mpm]
clib = false
```
Raise the timeout of all clib calls:
```
[mpm.overrides.clib]
timeout = 900
```

Run mpm config-template clib to print all overridable settings for your configuration file:

[mpm.overrides.clib]
cli_names = [
    "clib",
]
cli_search_path = []
dry_run = false
ignore_auto_updates = true
plan = false
post_args = []
pre_args = []
pre_cmds = []
stop_on_error = false
unmaintained = false
version_cli_options = [
    "--version",
]
version_regexes = [
    "(?P<version>\\d+\\.\\d+\\.\\d+)",
]

Recipes¶

A few jobs you would otherwise script around clib, one mpm command each:

Snapshot and clone a machine: mpm --clib dump clib.toml, then mpm restore clib.toml on the next one.
Export a compliance SBOM: mpm --clib sbom (CycloneDX by default, --spdx for SPDX).

Privilege escalation¶

mpm runs this manager as the current user and never prepends sudo by default. Flip the policy for its privileged operations with --sudo or the per-manager sudo override.

None of its operations is privileged.

See privilege escalation for the full policy.

Cooldown¶

State of clib’s release-age gating, from the cooldown support table:

Status: ❌ None

A cooldown only pays off where a compromised release can be withdrawn while the clock runs, and can only be emulated where the registry dates its releases. From the retraction table:

Registry: clib package wiki
Retraction: Wiki edit: the index is a GitHub wiki page, clibs/clib/wiki/Packages, scraped as HTML (CLIB_WIKI_URL in src/clib-search.c), so withdrawal is an edit to that page; the code itself is fetched from the GitHub archive of whichever repository the row names, and disappears with it
Publish date: ❌ the index carries names, URLs and descriptions only, with no version field at all, so there is nothing to date a release by

With --cooldown set, mpm skips this manager’s install and upgrade operations rather than run them unguarded (fail-closed); --cooldown best-effort opts back in.

Reference traces¶

A collection of raw native outputs captured from the manager’s own CLI and recorded in the bundled definition. If you know clib well and a transcript below looks wrong, or a newer release changed its output format, report it.

$ clib search --json --no-color {query}
[
  {
    "repo": "willemt/skiplist",
    "href": "https://github.com/willemt/skiplist",
    "description": "Dictionary implemented through a skiplist",
    "category": "data structure"
  }
]

Version check¶

The version is probed by running:

$ clib --version
2.8.7

and extracted with:

r"(?P<version>\d+\.\d+\.\d+)"

Upstream project¶

Metrics	`clibs/clib`
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Changelog¶

8.0.0 (2026-09-20)
- Add the clib C package manager with search, install and remove support, install forced --global. It ships no listing command, so no inventory is declared.