Install md4c with Homebrew

Project links

• Homepage

Commands and aliases

• md2html

Project history

The GitHub repository was created on 2016-10-03, and the project has continued as a small C library centered on a compact parser surface: the README emphasizes that the parser is implemented in one source file and one header file, with no dependencies beyond the standard C library.

MD4C's design grew around CommonMark compatibility, extension flags, and predictable performance. The upstream documentation says it targets CommonMark 0.31, supports common extensions such as tables, task lists, footnotes, strikethrough, math spans, wikilinks, and admonitions, and exposes both parser callbacks and a separate Markdown-to-HTML API.

Adoption history

The package-manager metadata supplied for this batch shows MD4C packaged across Homebrew, Debian/Ubuntu, Fedora, Alpine, Arch, MacPorts, Nix, and openSUSE. That breadth fits its role as a small C dependency that distributions can ship both as a library and as the `md2html` command.

The upstream repository tags include a long 0.x release series through release-0.5.3, indicating a project that has remained versioned and maintained after its initial public repository appeared in 2016.

How it is used

Library users include `md4c.h` and call `md_parse()` with callbacks for block, span, and text events. Applications that only need HTML can link the HTML renderer and call `md_html()`, receiving chunks of generated HTML through a callback.

The command-line packaging commonly exposes `md2html`, making MD4C useful both as a library dependency and as a quick Unix-style Markdown-to-HTML converter.

Why package nerds care

Package maintainers care about MD4C because it is a small, dependency-light C implementation of a common document parsing problem. The README explicitly contrasts it with DOM-style parsers and emphasizes embedding, compactness, portability, and resistance to pathological parsing inputs.

Its package appeal is also practical: it gives C and C++ projects a permissively licensed CommonMark parser without vendoring a larger Markdown stack or depending on a language runtime.

Timeline

• 2016-10-03: Official GitHub repository created.
• 0.2.x-0.5.x: Upstream release tags show a continuing versioned 0.x series.
• 2026: Upstream README states compliance with CommonMark 0.31.

Related projects

• CommonMark defines the Markdown specification target named by the MD4C README.
• The MD4C README compares its callback-oriented model with DOM-style Markdown parsers and documents an optional `md4c-html` renderer.

Sources

• https://api.github.com/repos/mity/md4c
• https://api.github.com/repos/mity/md4c/tags?per_page=30
• https://github.com/mity/md4c#readme
• https://github.com/mity/md4c/wiki
• source_facts.package-manager