VITA 49.2 Packet Generator

Generates native-language classes/structs for V49.2 packet definitons in a YAML configuration file.

Dependencies

vrtgen requires Python >= 3.7 as well as pip for Python >= 3.7.

To build the C++ header library, CMake 3.15 or later must be installed.

Generated C++ code requires g++ >= 10 for C++20 support, including concepts. The only dependency is the C++ header library. See the testing section.

If using the NATS command socket type option with vrtpktgen, the following library is also required:

• nats.c

Installation

Installation via pip is recommended, as it will automatically install the required dependencies. To install via pip:

sudo pip3 install --upgrade pip
pip3 install --user .

This will install both the vrtgen Python modules and the vrtpktgen executable.

Backend Installation

The vrtgen backend library is header only and can be included directly into your build tree by adding the contents of the include folder to your project's build structure.

To install the C++ library header files on your system:

cmake3 -B build
sudo cmake3 --build build --target install

On some Linux systems, CMake 3 is the default; run cmake instead of cmake3.

The headers are installed to /usr/local/include/vrtgen by default.

CMake Integration

External

To use the library from a CMake project, you can use find_package() to discover and use the namespaced target from the package configuration:

# CMakeLists.txt
find_package(vrtgen REQUIRED)
...
add_executable(foo foo.cpp)
...
target_link_libraries(foo PRIVATE vrtgen::vrtgen)

FetchContent

Using CMake's FetchContent allows this library to be downloaded and used as a dependency at configuration time, therefore avoiding the need to install it on your system:

# CMakeLists.txt
include(FetchContent)

FetchContent_Declare(
    vrtgen
    GIT_REPOSITORY https://github.com/geontech/vrtgen
    GIT_TAG v0.7.8
)
FetchContent_MakeAvailable(vrtgen)
...
add_executable(foo foo.cpp)
...
target_link_libraries(foo PRIVATE vrtgen::vrtgen)

Developer Setup

For developers, pip supports an editable install mode that links the source code to the Python site-packages directory. It is strongly recommended to use a venv environment or Docker image for development. To perform a "developer install" using a virtual environment:

python3 -m venv venv
. venv/bin/activate
python -m pip install --upgrade pip
python -m pip install -e .

Usage

This package installs a vrtpktgen executable in your path. The vrtpktgen program supports backend plug-ins to target different output types. By default, the cpp backend is installed.

Select an available backend with the first positional argument.

vrtpktgen cpp <filename>.yaml

Help is available with the --help (or -h) option. To get general help or to check which backends are available:

vrtpktgen --help

Testing

To build and execute the tests:

cmake3 -B build -DVRTGEN_BUILD_TESTS=ON
cmake3 --build build --target check

To run the Python parser tests:

pytest