1Introduction 2============ 3 4This 'book' is a small set of tutorials about using libuv_ as 5a high performance evented I/O library which offers the same API on Windows and Unix. 6 7It is meant to cover the main areas of libuv, but is not a comprehensive 8reference discussing every function and data structure. The `official libuv 9documentation`_ may be consulted for full details. 10 11.. _official libuv documentation: https://docs.libuv.org/en/v1.x/ 12 13This book is still a work in progress, so sections may be incomplete, but 14I hope you will enjoy it as it grows. 15 16Who this book is for 17-------------------- 18 19If you are reading this book, you are either: 20 211) a systems programmer, creating low-level programs such as daemons or network 22 services and clients. You have found that the event loop approach is well 23 suited for your application and decided to use libuv. 24 252) a node.js module writer, who wants to wrap platform APIs 26 written in C or C++ with a set of (a)synchronous APIs that are exposed to 27 JavaScript. You will use libuv purely in the context of node.js. For 28 this you will require some other resources as the book does not cover parts 29 specific to v8/node.js. 30 31This book assumes that you are comfortable with the C programming language. 32 33Background 34---------- 35 36The node.js_ project began in 2009 as a JavaScript environment decoupled 37from the browser. Using Google's V8_ and Marc Lehmann's libev_, node.js 38combined a model of I/O -- evented -- with a language that was well suited to 39the style of programming; due to the way it had been shaped by browsers. As 40node.js grew in popularity, it was important to make it work on Windows, but 41libev ran only on Unix. The Windows equivalent of kernel event notification 42mechanisms like kqueue or (e)poll is IOCP. libuv was an abstraction around libev 43or IOCP depending on the platform, providing users an API based on libev. 44In the node-v0.9.0 version of libuv `libev was removed`_. 45 46Since then libuv has continued to mature and become a high quality standalone 47library for system programming. Users outside of node.js include Mozilla's 48Rust_ programming language, and a variety_ of language bindings. 49 50This book and the code is based on libuv version `v1.42.0`_. 51 52Code 53---- 54 55All the example code and the source of the book is included as part of 56the libuv_ project on GitHub. 57Clone or Download libuv_, then build it:: 58 59 sh autogen.sh 60 ./configure 61 make 62 63There is no need to ``make install``. To build the examples run ``make`` in the 64``docs/code/`` directory. 65 66.. _v1.42.0: https://github.com/libuv/libuv/releases/tag/v1.42.0 67.. _V8: https://v8.dev 68.. _libev: http://software.schmorp.de/pkg/libev.html 69.. _libuv: https://github.com/libuv/libuv 70.. _node.js: https://www.nodejs.org 71.. _libev was removed: https://github.com/joyent/libuv/issues/485 72.. _Rust: https://www.rust-lang.org 73.. _variety: https://github.com/libuv/libuv/blob/v1.x/LINKS.md 74
