Benchmarks for evaluating Checked C

This page lists real-world programs that we have chosen to use to evaluate Checked C. Our goal is to have a suite of 10 to 12 programs that we can use to evaluate Checked C and tools for converting existing code to use Checked C.

The criteria for considering a program for inclusion in the evaluation suite are:

• The program is used in production.
• Someone cares about the program. The program is associated with an active project and it is being developed or maintained.
• The license allows us to redistribute a modified version of the program.
• The source code is at least 10,000 lines long.

We used the following criteria for decide on the mix of programs to include in the evaluation suite:

• Prefer programs that are widely used.
• Have an interesting mix of programs. Avoid more than 2 programs that "do the same thing" (compression, image processing etc.).
• Prefer programs that run on Windows in addition to Unix over those that just run on Unix.
• Prefer programs that have well-defined testing and benchmarking processes.

Selected programs

Icecast

• GPLv2
• 17,000 lines of C code
• Internet service, probably in decline
• Has had security issues.

libarchive

• Bugs have bound in this before using fuzzing.
• 3-clause UC Regents license
• 145,000 lines of C code
• Used all over the place at a low level
• "mid-modern" (2004)

LibTIFF

• Very permissive license
• 66,000 lines of C code
• Used all over the place at a low level
• Initially developed in 1993?

libuv

• Library for asynchronous I/O, originally developed as the platform layer for Node.js
• About 70,000 lines of C code (note: this is an old number and should be re-checked).

Lua

• Interpreter for Lua scripting language
• About 22,000 lines of C code

Opus

• Open source codec for interactive speech/audio transmission over the Internet.
• 70 ,000 lines of C code.

redis

• Very permissive license
• 94,000 lines of C code
• Internet service in semi-popular use
• Slightly more modern (2009)

SQLite

• Public domain
• 130,000 lines of C code
• Very robust and well tested

vsftpd

• GPLv2
• 16,000 lines of C code
• Has a very good security track record and was written in a very defensive style with regards to memory management. It would be an interesting case study to contrast with something that isn't, like say libarchive.

wolfSSL

• Lightweight SSL library used in IoT and embedded space.
• About 100,000 lines of C code (this line count needs to be double-checked).

zlib

• Pascal Cuoq of trust-in-soft is currently running a bug-finding effort on this project with tis-interpreter.
• Very permissive license
• 20,000 lines of C code
• Used all over the place at a low level
• Old (1995), C systems code

Other interesting programs

There are many other interesting C programs, ranging from tiny to very large.

• ParsonParson. A C library for parsing JSON files. We haveChecked C version of this parson.
• CMake: this is a mixture of C and C++ code. Last time, we checked it had about 600,000 lines of C code
• Git: about 210,000 lines of C code
• Linux kernel (to use as a benchmark for Checked C, we need this to compile reliably with clang. The LLVM/clang community is working on this.
• NeoVim.
• OpenSSL.
• X.org. About 3.3 millions of code, most of which is C.