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nothings
stb
C2014–2026
nothings / stb

stb

stb single-file public domain libraries for C/C++

Libraries & SDKs
Explore on GitHubRead Hacker News discussions
78Distinct people
111Mentions
0Explicit recommenders
35KGitHub stars
REPOSITORY AT A GLANCE

What to know before exploring

What it is

stb single-file public domain libraries for C/C++

GitHub

Where it is used

No documented product use was verified in the last source check.

What people are saying

No recommendation phrase was found in the indexed comments.

No classified warning is attached to this page. Read the discussions before treating silence as approval.

Also in these discussions

Mentioned in the same Hacker News threads. That is not proof they are substitutes.

This week on Hacker News

Nov 8–Nov 15 UTC · Direct repository links and separately labeled related project stories. Indexed through 11/15/2026, 9:28:18 AM UTC.

No direct repository links were found in the indexed HN discussions over the past seven days. Older discussions are available below.

Mentions over time

HN mentions by year111 dated mentions

Observed mentions: 2014-09-21 13:39:14 UTC to 2026-08-10 10:10:33 UTC.

0510152014-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2015-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 4 mentions; 0 submissions, 4 comments20142015-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2016-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 5 mentions; 2 submissions, 3 comments2016-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2017-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 15 mentions; 3 submissions, 12 comments2017-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2018-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 8 mentions; 4 submissions, 4 comments2018-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2019-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 8 mentions; 3 submissions, 5 comments2019-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2020-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 12 mentions; 2 submissions, 10 comments2020-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2021-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 14 mentions; 2 submissions, 12 comments20202021-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2022-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 9 mentions; 1 submissions, 8 comments2022-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2023-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 9 mentions; 1 submissions, 8 comments2023-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2024-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 7 mentions; 0 submissions, 7 comments2024-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2025-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 8 mentions; 3 submissions, 5 comments2025-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2026-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 7 mentions; 1 submissions, 6 comments2026-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2027-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 5 mentions; 0 submissions, 5 comments. Incomplete calendar period.2026*

* An incomplete calendar period is marked with an outlined bar. Its count is not directly comparable with a full period.

Counts come from the repository’s dated source evidence. Index cutoff: 2026-11-02 08:16:59 UTC.

View mention counts and date ranges
UTC ranges include their start and exclude their end. Select a period to filter the source evidence.
PeriodStart (UTC)End (exclusive, UTC)MentionsSubmissionsComments
20142014-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2015-01-01 00:00:00 UTC404
20152015-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2016-01-01 00:00:00 UTC523
20162016-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2017-01-01 00:00:00 UTC15312
20172017-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2018-01-01 00:00:00 UTC844
20182018-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2019-01-01 00:00:00 UTC835
20192019-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2020-01-01 00:00:00 UTC12210
20202020-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2021-01-01 00:00:00 UTC14212
20212021-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2022-01-01 00:00:00 UTC918
20222022-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2023-01-01 00:00:00 UTC918
20232023-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2024-01-01 00:00:00 UTC707
20242024-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2025-01-01 00:00:00 UTC835
20252025-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2026-01-01 00:00:00 UTC716
2026 (partial)2026-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2027-01-01 00:00:00 UTC505

What Hacker News says

4 sources
mmozeiko·Nov 13, 2014
Small image libraries are fun! jpeg writing & loading: https://code.google.com/p/jpeg-compressor/ jpeg loading: https://code.google.com/p/picojpeg/ jpeg loading: https://code.google.com/p/jpgd/ OpenEXR writing: https://github.com/aras-p/miniexr/blob/master/miniexr.cpp PNG writing (and zlib + ZIP file handling): https://code.google.com/p/miniz/ Newest version of miniz reads and writes zip64 archives and is part of vogl project: https://github.com/ValveSoftware/vogl/tree/master/src/voglco... And of course already mentioned stb_image: https://github.com/nothings/stb/blob/master/stb_image.h
In LodePNG: All-in-one PNG image decoder and encoder for C and C++
binarycrusader·Sep 28, 2014
Unfortunately, Opus doesn't have a proper specification, instead relying on source code in several places to provide documentation through extrapolating what code intended. To quote Sean Barrett: Opus' non-public-domain code as spec is terrible. Independent implementation requires "clean room" = writing own specification! Sean is famous among the game developer community for providing a useful variety of public domain code (i'd call them libraries, but almost all are written to be used as a single-header file include): https://github.com/nothings/stb
In Opus beats all other lossy audio codecs. Again
flohofwoe·Sep 21, 2014
What other APIs would that be which offer this functionality? In D3D this used to be offloaded into a separate D3DX API, but AFAIK this is no longer supported in Windows8 (at least in the WinRT API) and has been moved into separate mostly personal projects (e.g. http://directxtex.codeplex.com/). A 3D rendering API should only be concerned about efficient 3D rendering and not burden itself with specific resource file formats. For OpenGL there's plenty of libraries to choose from, for instance: - glm for math (http://glm.g-truc.net/0.9.5/index.html) - gli for texture loading (http://gli.g-truc.net/0.5.1/index.html) - assimp for general asset loading: http://assimp.sourceforge.net/index.html - the STB headers (not OpenGL specific): https://github.com/nothings/stb - GLFW as window system glue and input wrapper - ...and more which I am not awa
Read the rest
re of or forgot to list GPU vendors also have SDKs and especially debugging tools (e.g. NVIDIA nSight which integrates into VStudio). It's not in one place like in DirectX, but on the other hand, the OpenGL world has a lot more platforms and usage scenarios to cover then D3D or the various new-style APIs like Metal or Mantle (these are the actual motivation for OpenGL-Next, reducing overhead even when this means a lower-level API which is even more focuses and harder to use then before).
In OpenGL in 2014

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