4: Boundaries & Interfaces - Expanded Project Guides

Generated from: SPRINT_4_BOUNDARIES_INTERFACES_PROJECTS.md

This folder contains deep-dive guides for each project in the learning path.

Overview

These projects teach how to design C APIs that are hard to misuse: clear ownership, opaque types, ABI stability, and defensive boundaries. You will build libraries with explicit contracts, strict parsers, and predictable behavior across module boundaries.

Project Index

# Project Difficulty Time Key Focus
1 Plugin System for a Simple Shell Intermediate 1-2 weeks Dynamic loading, ABI contracts
2 Key-Value Store Client Library Intermediate 1-2 weeks Ownership, TCP framing
3 JSON Parser Library Intermediate 2 weeks Parsing, error models
4 Logging Library Intermediate 1 week Sinks, formatting, thread safety
5 libhttp-lite (Integrated Boundary System) Advanced 3-4 weeks HTTP parsing, integration

Prerequisites

  • Comfortable with multi-file C projects
  • Familiarity with headers, linking, and ownership patterns
  • Basic debugging with gdb or lldb