libingenialink - Motion and communications library for Ingenia servodrives

libingenialink is a portable, pure C implementation library for simple motion control tasks and communications with Ingenia drives.

What it can do

The library provides:

• Simple motion control functions (homing, profile position, etc.)
• Communications API for Ingenia drives (multiple protocols supported)
• Load and use IngeniaDictionary XML dictionaries
• Operate directly using units (e.g. degrees, rad/s, etc.)
• Register polling and monitoring for scope applications
• Servo listing and monitoring
• Object oriented interface
• Thread-safe communications
• Descriptive and detailed error messages

Building libingenialink

libingenialink depends on libsercomm and libxml2. A couple of sections below you will find some instructions on how to build and install them. libingenialink can be built and installed on any system like this:

cmake -H. -B_build -DCMAKE_INSTALL_PREFIX=$INSTALL
cmake --build _build
cmake --build _build --target install

Note that a INSTALL is the installation folder.

Build options

The following build options are available:

• WITH_PROT_EUSB (ON): Build EUSB protocol support.
• WITH_PROT_MCB (OFF): Build MCB protocol support (EXPERIMENTAL).
• WITH_EXAMPLES (OFF): When enabled, the library usage example applications will be built.
• WITH_DOCS (OFF): When enabled the API documentation can be built.
• WITH_PIC (OFF): When enabled, generated code will be position independent. This may be useful if you want to embed ingenialink into a dynamic library.

Furthermore, standard CMake build options can be used. You may find useful to read this list of useful CMake variables.

Dependencies

As mentioned before, libingenialink depends on libsercomm and libxml2, both referenced in the external folder as submodules. Therefore, if building them make sure to initialize the submodules first:

git submodule update --init --recursive

Below you can find some building instructions for dependencies. Note that INSTALL is the installation folder.

libsercomm

libsercomm also uses CMake, so it can be built and installed on any system like this:

cd external/sercomm
cmake -H. -B_build -DCMAKE_INSTALL_PREFIX=$INSTALL
cmake --build _build --target install

libxml2

Athough libxml2 is multiplatform, the building process can be somewhat painful on some systems, specially on Windows. This is why we provide a CMake script to build it on the systems we support. It can be built and installed like this:

cd external/libxml2
cmake -H. -B_build -DCMAKE_INSTALL_PREFIX=$INSTALL
cmake --build _build --target install

If using Linux, we actually recommend installing the library packages from the official repositories. For example in Debian/Ubuntu systems:

sudo apt install libxml2-dev

On recent versions of macOS, it seems to be already installed on the system. If not, you can also use brew to install it.

Coding standards

libingenialink is written in ANSI C (C99), so any modern compiler should work.

Code is written following the Linux Kernel coding style. You can check for errors or suggestions like this (uses checkpatch.pl):

cmake --build build --target style_check