Libptytty is a small C/C++ library to manage pseudo-ttys in a uniform way, created out of frustration over the many differences of PTY/TTY handling in different operating systems.

In addition to mere PTY/TTY management, it supports updating the session database at utmp, and wtmp/lastlog for login shells.

It also supports forking after start-up and dropping privileges in the calling process. This reduces the potential attack surface: if the calling process were to be compromised by the user starting the program, there would be less to gain, as only the helper process is running with privileges (e.g., setuid/setgid).