Thanks for checking out LibSerial! LibSerial provides a convenient, object oriented approach to accessing serial ports on POSIX systems.

After you get to know LibSerial a bit, if you find that you have ideas for improvement, please be sure to let us know!

If you simply want to use LibSerial and you already utilize a Debian Linux distribution, use apt to install the current release package:

sudo apt install libserial-dev

Otherwise, if you are a developer and would like to make use of the latest code, you will need to have a few packages installed to build LibSerial: a recent g++ release, (anything after gcc-3.2 should work), the python sip library, the boost unit test library, and Google Test (gtest). For Debian users:

sudo apt update
sudo apt install autogen autoconf build-essential cmake graphviz libboost-dev libgtest-dev libtool python-sip-dev doxygen

If you get the source code from github and would like to install the library, there are a few steps you will need to accomplish:

First, compile the GTest library object files and copy libgtest.a and libgtest_main.a into your /usr/lib/ directory:

cd /usr/src/gtest
sudo cmake CMakeLists.txt
sudo make
sudo cp *.a /usr/lib

Next, generate the configure script:

make -f Makefile.dist

Then execute the configure script:

./configure 

You can specify an installation directory different from the default, (/usr/local/), by adding --prefix=/installation/directory/path/ to the configure command. For example:

./configure --prefix=/usr/include/

Once you have executed the configure script, you can build the library with make and install with make install:

make
sudo make install

If you are interested in running the unit tests, ensure serial port names are appropriate for your hardware configuration in the UnitTests.cpp file:

#define TEST_SERIAL_PORT_1 "/dev/ttyUSB0"
#define TEST_SERIAL_PORT_2 "/dev/ttyUSB1"

The unit tests will be built during the make step above or you can build them by simply by running the compile script (which uses cmake):

./compile.sh

Unit test executables built using make can be run from the libserial/test/ directory:

./test/UnitTests
./unit_tests

Alternatively, unit test executables built using the compile script can be run from the libserial/build/bin/ directory:

./build/bin/UnitTests
./build/bin/unit_tests

Complete documentation is available here.

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