Resources

Curated list of Plan 9 (and sometimes 9p) libraries and software. Generally when referring to "Plan 9" this really means 9front. 9p.io links are accessible over 9p as well. On 9front you can run 9fs 9pio as a shortcut. Many of the applications listed here are available under the 9front ports tree.

Sites

• cat-v.org
• 9p.mom/f - files for hacking together bootable things without easy access to a 9front system
• NOPE NOPE NOPE - qwx's site with 9front usage tips and software

Papers

• Plan 9 From Bell Labs - overview of the Plan 9 system
• Security in Plan 9 - overview of the security architecture

Manuals

• aiju's manuals
• cat-v manuals
• Plan 9 3e FAQ - third edition
• Plan 9 2e FAQ - second edition
• Plan 9 Tips and Information - second edition
• Programmer's Manual (1st Edition) - first edition

Talks

• The Name Game - talk on Plan 9 and Inferno by Charles Forsyth
• Plan 9: Not Dead, Just Resting - talk on Plan 9 and 9front by Ori Bernstein

Tutorials

• Modding Rio - how to add a wallpaper and change colors
• Plan 9 GUI Examples - GUI development on Plan 9
• Plan 9 Desktop Guide - all in one guide to get started

Applications

• color9 - color picker
• disco - Discord client
• fontsel - font selector
• git9 - git implementation
• unionfs - deep union file server
• xmpp - XMPP client
• hell - Mastodon client
• 9vim - port of vim to Plan 9
• Phil9's 9vim fork - 9vim with additional features and bug fixes
• Moogle - simple 3D wireframe editor
• whiteboardfs - collaborative drawing file system
• mpl - music player
• neindaw - DAW for Plan 9
• orca - live programming environment
• treason - video player
• ytfs - file system for playing youtube audio
• zuke - music player
• wrec - screen and window recorder

Languages

Languages known to be buildable/operational on Plan 9.

• aa - tiny, embeddable Lisp-like language
• APL - primitive APL implementation
• c4 - C in 4 functions
• cfront - archaic C++ pre-compiler
• Chibi Scheme - small embeddable scheme
• clox9 - port of Nystrom's clox to Plan 9
• Go - the Go programming language
• Hugs - Haskell98 interpreter
• Idris 2 - dependently typed language, pre-alpha port
• Lua (lu9) - Lua from kvik
• Fennel - Fennel via lu9
• Myrddin - systems language by Ori Bernstein
• nhc98 - Haskell compiler
• Ocaml - Ocaml
• Perl - Perl
• Python 2
• Scheme 9 - Scheme 9 from Empty Space
• Squeak - Squeak/Smalltalk
• Tcl - Tcl port by fgb
• TinyScheme - TinyScheme
• UMB Scheme - UMB Scheme
• uxn - small stack machine

Libraries

• libtags - cross-platform library for reading tags
• libtheme - theming library for Plan 9 graphics
• libutf - Plan 9 compatible UTF-8 C library
• microui - tiny immediate-mode UI library
• npe - native porting environment for POSIX software

Forks

• 9ants - modified kernel and custom namespace control tooling
• 9front - new protocols, file systems, greatly expanded hardware support
• 9legacy - continues maintaining a Bell Labs-like source base
• 9pi - port of 9legacy to the Raspberry Pi
• Harvey - MIT-licensed OS based on Plan 9
• JehanneOS - Giacomo Tesio's fork
• Nix (deprecated) - focused on high performance parallel cloud computing

Influenced by Plan 9

• acme2k - acme-inspired editor, geared towards configurability
• edwood - acme-inspired editor in Go
• sam - fork of sam(1) with extensive extensibility
• anvil - acme-inspired editor in Go
• ad - acme-inspired modal editor
• Vis - vi-like editor based on structural regular expressions
• mk - rewrite of mk(1) in Go
• sregx - structural regular expressions tool and library
• c9 - low-level 9p client and server implementation
• planrust - Plan 9 influenced kernel in Rust (2019)
• R9 - reimplementation of the Plan 9 kernel in Rust (2022-present)
• Akaros - parallel and high-performance applications, scales to many cores
• Inferno - register-oriented VM OS, leverages 9p as "styx"
• Interim - minimal OS featuring a lisp environment
• Redox - Unix-like OS written in Rust