GLib
Shares rank 5 of 9 c++ libraries by recommenders
C utility library offering automatic resource management and basic data structures; critics find its design odd and its abstractions unsafe.
C utility library offering automatic resource management and basic data structures; critics find its design odd and its abstractions unsafe.
9 people gave an opinion
- recommend it
- 6
- criticize it
- 3
- approval share
- 67%
Recommended in 4 of 13 months
- November 2025: recommended
- December 2025: recommended
- January 2026: not recommended
- February 2026: not recommended
- March 2026: not recommended
- April 2026: not recommended
- May 2026: not recommended
- June 2026: not recommended
- July 2026: recommended
- August 2026: not recommended
- September 2026: not recommended
- October 2026: recommended
- November 2026: not recommended (month in progress)
Why it doesn’t carry the badge
- 6 people recommend itNeeds 10 or more, not met.
- 2 recommenders for every criticNeeds 2 to 1 or better, met.
- Recommended in 4 of 13 monthsNeeds 4 or more, met.
The same three rules apply to every product, and the badge can’t be bought. How the badge works
What people say about it
The reasons people give, with the number of comments that give each one. Open a reason to read what they said.
Why people recommend it
Each mark is one comment
Automatic resource management in C
“GLib proves you can have that feature in C, today, with compilers that have been stable for decades”
Comment from 8 Dec 2025 in “The C++ standard for the F-35 Fighter Jet [video]” “remarkably elegant solution to automatic resource management”
Comment from 8 Dec 2025 in “The C++ standard for the F-35 Fighter Jet [video]” Standard structures and alloc routines
“no one should be custom building most basic structures in C these days”
Comment from 10 Oct 2026 in “C for Rust programmers” “from glib's or sqlite's alloc and free routines”
Comment from 12 Jul 2026 in “Understanding the Odin Programming Language”
Other c++ libraries people recommend
The four most recommended other c++ libraries, with the same counts for each, so you can compare like for like. The tick on each bar marks the 2 to 1 line the badge needs.
| Product | Recommend | Criticize | Approval | Months | Owned | Badge |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| musl libc | 34 | 25 | 58% | 10 | — | — |
| glibc | 29 | 75 | 28% | 10 | — | — |
| Cosmopolitan libc | 29 | 6 | 83% | 10 | — | Approved |
| Sp.h standard library for C | 11 | 27 | 29% | 1 | — | — |
| GLibThis page | 6 | 3 | 67% | 4 | — | — |
What people said
9 of the 10 comments that mention it, newest first. Each links to the original comment.
“Although GLib indeed has some rather weird design/taste.”
“glib is just bad in this way by not providing a safe abstraction”
“no one should be custom building most basic structures in C these days”
“The amount of problems with glib+gtk I've encountered on Linux forced me to go outside”
“from glib's or sqlite's alloc and free routines”
“glib is terrible for anything important”
“I'm a big fan of the GLib/old ObjC approach when it comes to UI elements”
“GLib proves you can have that feature in C, today, with compilers that have been stable for decades”
“remarkably elegant solution to automatic resource management”
Counts come from 1,795,640 Hacker News comments, November 2025 to November 2026. How we count. Report a mistake.