A software development toolkit for signal processing which uses block modules.
quickstream is currently being developed on the Debian GNU/Linux 12 (bookworm) with the GNOME desktop. It was also developed on Ubuntu 22.04 with a XFCE desktop.
Being currently in alpha, things can change. No git tags yet.
libc, pthreads, gcc, and GNUmake. Very little more. Optionally GTK3, but kind-of not very flashy without GTK3. Dependency details are listed below ...
In brief: quickstream is a C code API (application programming interface) DSO (dynamic shared object) library and several executable programs that link with that library, and many smaller C code objects (modules) called blocks. quickstream steals many great ideas from GNU Radio but is far smaller.
The above image shows quickstreamGUI simultaneously running and editing a quickstream flow graph.
quickstream is also a command-line program that runs "quickstream" programs. It comes with a very verbose "--help" option. It comes with bash-completion and is a simple interpretor. The quickstream command-line program has mostly the same powers as quickstreamGUI but without the GUI. The two programs quickstreamGUI and quickstream compliment each other.
libquickstream.so is a DSO library that links with quickstreamGUI and quickstream (command-line program). libquickstream.so does the heavy lifting.
Blocks are small pieces of compiled C (or C++) code.
There are chooses as to how to get them into the quickstream environment. One aspect is whither the block is a separate DSO file or is it built into libquickstream.so. Another aspect of a block is whither it is a simple block or a super block. Super blocks are similar to GNU Radio hier (hierarchical) blocks.
As noted before, it's currently be developed on Debian GNU/Linux 12 with a GNOME desktop. Here's a list of the deb packages that I think are needed to build quickstream:
gcc make graphviz imagemagick doxygen wget libgtk-3-dev librtlsdr-dev gnuradio-dev vim-gtk3 gnome-terminal qt6-base-dev qt6-tools-dev qt6-wayland
Some of these packages are optional, like all the packages after the wget package.
Next download the source from github and cd to the top source directory.
Run
./bootstrap
That will download some files. No other build step will download files like this.
Run
./configure
That will generate a very small make file, "config.make". You can edit the generated file to change your installation PREFIX, and other options.
Run
make
or better yet run
make -j 8
to build it faster.
Run
make install
Installing quickstream (the package) is optional. The source files are laid out with the same relative paths as the installed files would be. The programs all tend to use this relative path layout to figure out how to run, so it runs the same in the source directory as it does in the installed directory tree. One plus to installing it, is that the bash-completion file will get installed, making the bash-completion for the quickstream command-line program automatic; but you can source the bash completion file in the source directory at share/bash-completion/completions/quickstream
This bash script may be able to install all the prerequisite software packages. If you find packages missing, you can tell me about it. I do believe it really is impossible to make this fool proof given how things can vary.
sudo apt install \
gcc make graphviz imagemagick doxygen wget \
libgtk-3-dev librtlsdr-dev gnuradio-dev \
vim-gtk3 gnome-terminal qt6-base-dev qt6-tools-dev \
qt6-wayland
The following bash script has a good chance to end by running the quickstreamGUI program. Please be aware that there are many downloaded scripts in it that you most certainly do not want to run as a user with super powers. Better yet, just step through it looking at the scripts before you run them.
mkdir quickstream_source && \
wget --no-check-certificate \
https://github.com/lanceman2/quickstream/tarball/master -O - | \
tar -xvzf - --strip-components 1 -C quickstream_source && \
cd quickstream_source && \
./bootstrap && \
./configure && \
make -j 6 && \
./bin/quickstreamGUI
If you see the GUI now, great. Try "right click"; I think that there is a "right click" menu pop-up for every thing you see. And, left click to make connections and select/grab blocks.
February 2024 I gave a talk at FOSDOM 2024 on quickstream. So far, I do not know that anyone has any interest in quickstream, except myself. I'll continue to develop it without adding documentation or software releases (git tags). Having no users has its benefits.
March 2024 Current development focus: Started adding optional Qt6 widgets; likely a replacement to GTK3 in general. In short: GTK3 is too limited compared to Qt6 widgets. Note: adding Qt6 C++ code will increase quickstream package compile times considerably. It's not usable yet, but tests show promise.