Yea, I have been learning C recently too. I have found the experience quite a lot more enjoyable than I thought I would. I was originally motivated so that I wouldn't be "scared" to involve myself in working with C FFI calls in the various other languages I use.

I've found it just as much fun as Scheme, my favorite language to work in. If you think of Scheme as the minimum-usable implementation of lambda calculus, then C is like the minimum-usable implementation of a Turing machine. They're kind of dual to one another in a very fun way.

The one thing I'm really struggling with, like you, is understanding the C "ecosystem". Anything past Makefiles is so complex, especially for my uses. Using something header-only library like STB or a simple library like Raylib is super straightforward, but figuring out what, when, and how to use things like pkg-config, Cmake, Meson, or other tools is a real headache. Does anyone have any favorite resources?

I'd also appreciate something more detailed about modern C style, when and why I'd need a custom allocator, or anything else you wouldn't see in K&R or other introduction.

PS A lot of people say things like "libc" sucks, you shouldn't be using XYZ function from libc. What should I be using instead? I'm all for learning via implementing things myself, but surely that's not the recommended route for everything in C world.