"C" D-Bus (CDBUS) Library

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Introduction

The C D-Bus library (CDBUS) is a simple binding (in C) to the D-Bus reference library. It does not attempt to wrap and abstract the entire reference library but is intended, instead, to compliment the functions and features provided by it. To that end, CDBUS does provide several useful abstraction (Timer, Watch, Dispatcher, Interface, etc...) that simplify implementing D-Bus clients and services from C without incurring the need for a heavier-weight framework (e.g. GLib/GObject, QT, etc...). It also provides a main loop abstraction that can be implemented by many main loop implementations. Initially two main loop implementations are provided: one for libev and one for Glib. It should be straightforward to add additional implementations for other popular main loop implementations.

Dependencies

CDBUS depends on the following external libraries:

• D-Bus reference Library (version > 1.4.X)
• libev (version >= 4.00) Optional
• Glib (version >= 2.0.0) Optional
• Doxygen Necessary for building documentation.
• CMake (version >= 2.6.0) Necessary for building.

Building

Before building CDBUS all of it's dependencies must be built and installed in their proper locations.

Host Build

The CDBUS build is based on CMake and a convenient script (build_host.sh) is provided to simplify the build process. To build the library (once the dependencies are built and installed) execute the following command:

# ./build_host.sh

By default a release version of the library is built. A "debug" option can be specified as the first argument to make a debug version of the library:

# ./build_host.sh debug

Target Build

There is also a script to build a cross-compiled version of the library (build_target.sh). This needs to up modified for the particular build environment. In particular, a CMake toolchain file must be specifed (cmake.toolchain) which should be located in the top-level path defined by CMAKE_TOOLCHAIN_PATH_PREFIX. Furthermore a shell script (environment-setup), if present in the same toolchain path, will be sourced prior to building the target library. Additional details on cross-compiling under CMake can be found here.

Building Main Loop Back-ends

It is possible to control which main loop back-ends are built. By default, the build scripts will attempt to build all the main loop back-ends (libev and Glib). To disable a specific main loop back-end a CMake macro can be defined.

To disable the libev main loop the following CMake macro needs to be defined when generating the Makefile:

./build_host.sh -DCDBUS_NO_LIBEV_LOOP=1

Likewise, to disable the Glib main loop pass the following macro to CMake:

./build_host.sh -DCDBUS_NO_GLIB_LOOP=1

At least one main loop back-end must be built in order to effectively use CDBUS. In the future additional main loop implementations will likely be handled in a similar manner.

Installation

The library installation path prefix (for both host and/or target) can be modified by passing in a CMake variable on the command line:

# ./build_host.sh -DCMAKE_INSTALL_PREFIX=/usr/local

The default installation prefix is typically /usr/local.

The host and target build scripts will create a directory in the project root directory with the machine name with a suffix indicating whether this is a Release or Debug build. So for an x86 64-Bit Linux machine the resulting directory might be:

x86_64-Release

Inside this directory will be all the by-products of the build itself. If you move into the resulting build directory several additional make targets are available.

To install the library type:

# make install

To uninstall the library type:

# make uninstall

To generate public documention type:

# make pub-docs

To install the public documentation type:

# make install-docs

The public documentation is stored in the ${CMAKE_INSTALL_PREFIX}/share/doc/cdbus directory.

These documents can be uninstalled using either:

# make uninstall-docs

or

# make uninstall

Both options will remove the documentation while the last option (uninstall) removes the entire installation as well.

To generate a source distribution type:

# make dist-cdbus

And of course to clean the build you can simple erase the build directory from the project root:

# rm -rf x86_64-Release

License

The CDBUS library itself is licensed under the MIT License. See LICENSE in the source distribution for additional details. Additional terms may apply since CDBUS does have other dependencies. The intent, however, was to utilize components that only have compatible licenses and support both open source and propriety (closed) source applications.