liburing

liburing is a C library that makes it easier to use io_uring, a feature built into the Linux kernel for handling input and output operations. io_uring is a way for programs to ask the kernel to read or write data, handle network connections, or perform other system tasks without waiting around for each one to finish. This can make applications significantly faster because many operations can be submitted and completed at the same time.

The library does two main things: it provides helper functions for setting up and tearing down io_uring instances, and it offers a simpler interface for applications that do not need to work with the full kernel-level implementation directly. Without this library, using io_uring requires understanding kernel data structures and memory ring buffers in detail.

The library is written in C and is not tied to a specific Linux kernel version. You can use a newer version of liburing on an older kernel, though some newer features will only work on kernels that support them. Building it follows a standard configure-then-make pattern, and after installation it produces both shared and static library files.

A separate FFI variant of the library is included for programming languages and environments that cannot use inline C functions. This lets other languages link against liburing as a binary dependency without needing to process C header files directly.

The bulk of the repository is actually a regression and unit test suite for both the library and the underlying kernel feature. The README notes this test suite may crash or hang older kernels, so it should not be run on outdated systems. The library is dual-licensed under LGPL and MIT.