The CUPS library provides a whole collection of interfaces needed to support the internal needs of the CUPS software as well as the needs of applications, filters, printer drivers, and backends.
Unlike the rest of CUPS, the CUPS API library is provided under the GNU Library General Public License. This means that you can use the CUPS API library in both proprietary and open-source programs.
The <cups/cups.h> header file must be included to use the CUPS functions.
Programs using these functions must be linked to the CUPS library: libcups.a, libcups.so.2, libcups.2.dylib, libcups_s.a, or libcups2.lib depending on the platform. The following command compiles myprogram.c using GCC and the CUPS library:
gcc -o myprogram myprogram.c -lcups
Unless otherwise specified, the CUPS API functions require CUPS 1.1 or higher.