skalibs is a package centralizing the free software / open source C
development files used for building all software at skarnet.org: it contains
essentially general-purpose libraries. You will need to install skalibs if
you plan to build skarnet.org software. The point is that you won't have to
download and compile big libraries, and care about portability issues,
everytime you need to build a package: do it only once.

skalibs can also be used as a sound basic start for C development. There are
a lot of general-purpose libraries out there; but if your main goal is to
produce small and secure C code with a focus on system programming, skalibs
might be for you.