Fresh build on OSX complains about avahi-client being missing

[chevdor]

The doc however mentions that avahi is optional.

[lundmar]

It is supposed to be optional - please provide more details.

[soundstorm]

@chevdor use --disable-avahi flag to disable avahi.
But will fail anyway, as macOS' rpcgen does not support -M flag.

[soundstorm]

However you can install rpcgen-mt via macports, which will need an replacement of rpcgen in the src/Makefile.am or easier (to avoid version mismatch of automake): run ./configure --disable-avahi, then modify the src/Makefile to use rpcgen-mt
@lundmar a flag or switch by Darwin-platform to automatically disable avahi and use -mt Version of rpcgen would be great 👍

[lundmar]

@soundstorm Patches are welcome ;)

The proper solution would be to write the small piece of code to replace avahi with bonjour/zeroconf on mac. Unfortunately I don't have a mac myself so any support for mac would have to be contributed by others and I would welcome that very much 👍

[hraftery]

Thanks @soundstorm that worked a treat! In summary:

1. Download and unpack liblxi source.
2. Run ./configure --disable-avahi
3. Install MacPorts and run sudo port install rpcgen-mt
4. Modify src/Makefile.am, replacing rpcgen on the second last line with /opt/local/bin/rpcgen-mt
5. make
6. sudo make install

[ochococo]

Notes from the macOS Big Sur battlefield.

brew install automake 
./autogen.sh 
./configure --disable-avahi

You need Mac ports (https://ports.macports.org) to do this step:

sudo port install rpcgen-mt   

After using rpcgen-mt in src/Makefile.am I was almost but not quite able to run make:

Got:

vxi11core_clnt.c:18:2: error: implicitly declaring library function 'memset' with type 'void *(void *, int, unsigned long)' [-Werror,-Wimplicit-function-declaration]
        memset((char *)&clnt_res, 0, sizeof(clnt_res));

added this to vxi11core_clnt.c:

#include <string.h>
#include <unistd.h>

then make, make install went fine.

Last step, cd test, changed to my devices ip and location, then:

gcc /usr/local/lib/liblxi.dylib scpi.c 

It compiled! But when I try to run it:

[1]    16707 segmentation fault  ./a.out

It does that on this line:

 device = lxi_connect("192.168.X.X", 0, "gpib0,22", timeout, VXI11);

It crashes during the connection attempt is performed (I can see Agilent E5810A ethernet light flashing).

[hraftery]

Notes from the macOS Big Sur battlefield.

I find it surprising you experienced these issues and I did not, despite using the same OS only a month earlier with no commits to master in the meantime. Sounds like the library compilation was successful in the end. From there I compiled and ran lxi-tools without issue (although the GUI is buggy, but that's another matter).

I suggest you compare your scpi.c file with the equivalent from lxi-tools - if lxi-tools works then maybe you can find some hints there.

[ochococo]

Aaaaand it works!

Recipe that worked on Big Sur:

Thanks @soundstorm @hraftery 🙏

./autogen.sh 
./configure --disable-avahi
nano src/Makefile.am //  replace `rpcgen` with `/opt/local/bin/rpcgen-mt`
make
make install
cd ./test
gcc /usr/local/lib/liblxi.dylib scpi.c 
 ./a.out
KEITHLEY INSTRUMENTS INC.,MODEL 2000,0598354,A05  /A02  

What happened? I don't know, just tried it from scratch today and it went fine. It's not like I was able to build this thing right away, tried couple of solutions and one of the experiment must have caused this weird crash.

Next step?

Build the lib for armv7 and arm64 :)

[lundmar]

FYI - in the next release autotools is replaced with meson and the need for rpcgen is also gone.