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Show HN: Easy alternative to giflib – header-only decoder in C

Show HN: Easy alternative to giflib – header-only decoder in C

4 comments

·July 17, 2025

Hi HN, I made a lightweight, header-only GIF decoder in C, inspired by stb-style libraries. No dynamic allocation, portable, and optimized for embedded devices.

GitHub: https://github.com/Ferki-git-creator/TurboStitchGIF-HeaderOn...

Would love feedback or suggestions.

Visit

anitil

Very nice project, interesting that there's a couple header-only projects on the front page today [0].

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44556318

FerkiHN

I made this to replace giflib for embedded and low-resource use cases. It's:

header-only (drop-in),

zero-allocation (you provide the buffer),

faster LZW decoding (turbo mode),

compatible with C89 environments, etc.

Happy to get feedback or suggestions!

eqvinox

Listing code size numbers for arm-none-eabi-gnu might be good advertisement (compile/"size" output of a file using all the functions is enough, no need to figure out some target to link or have a main() for)

ranger_danger

> compatible with C89 environments

What do you mean by this? Because the code I'm looking at does not appear to be C89.