bbmp_utils

bbmp_utils is a native library for working with BMP files.

It is written in POSIX C11 and its only dependency it the C stdlib. It has only been tested on amd64, linux 5.1 and gcc 9.0, though I see no reason why it shouldn't work on other architectures and/or POSIX systems (cross-compilation isn't yet supported by the build system but host-compilation should work).

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As of now it includes:

• functionality for parsing metadata out of and writing it to BMP files
• a helper API for working with raw BMP image data
• userspace functions for editing raw bitmaps (e.g. a rot90 function for rotating a pixelarray by 90 degrees in either direction)
• optional python3 extension module for interacting with the library from within python

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Development

Development is done using meson with the ninja backend.

1. Run $ meson setup build_dbg -Dbuildtype=debug (replace debug with release if you wish to build a release build w/o debugging symbols and w/ optimizations)
2. Run $ ninja -C build_dbg to build the project
3. Run # ninja -C build_dbg install to install the library and the header files in the default location.

If you wish to not build the python extension module, pass -Dgen_py_bindings=false to the initial meson setup command.

ali.fish

If you're using the fish shell, sourcing this file (e.g. $ source ./ali.fish) will expose a few aliases for more convenient developing inside the shell:

• b: build the debug version of the project
• rt: run the default test application in the debug build
• vrt: run valgrind on the default test application in the debug build
• g: run GDB on the default test applicaiton in the debug build

The aliases are global (not universal) and live only in the current shell session.

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Note that on linux, standard practice is to never install libraries w/ debugging symbols, so that should be avoided. (e.g. never install a build generated with meson setup build_* -Dbuildtype=debug)

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TODO:

• documentation
• optimize the helper (internal representations of image data are horrendeously inefficient and memory hungry -- fix that)
• extend the parser with funtionality for easily modifying metadata of existing BMP files
• extend the build system to support more edge/use cases and installation

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The BMP file format is thoroughly documented here.