gen_serial is a generic serial port driver written by Tom Szilagyi and Shawn Pearce to allow Erlang applications to use the host's RS-232 serial ports through a single cross platform API.
This repo just packages up
the POSIX version as a rebar3 lib with a new rebar.config,
gen_serial.app.src and a slightly modified posix/Makefile so it can
be built as a rebar OTP app and source dependency, rather than as an
Erlang system library. These notes have been modified to reflect the
removal of Windows support and the new build/installation mechanism.
Each serial port is managed in its own host OS process, as a C port,
ensuring that the stability of the Erlang node is not compromised by
the gen_serial driver.
Currently this driver and API has been tested on Linux. It should also work on any POSIX compatible (UNIX-like) system.
A simple test module is also provided as gen_serial_test. This has some
test cases which can be run in one Erlang node (using a loopback serial
cable with a null modem installed and two serial ports on the host) or
between two networked Erlang nodes (using a serial cable with a null
modem to connect the two hosts).
Building gen_serial on UNIX platforms is pretty simple:
rebar3 compile
This will compile the Erlang code using rebar3, and invoke the
Makefile in c_src/posix to compile the POSIX driver backend.
To add this app as a source dependency to your OTP app, add this to
your app's rebar.config:
{ deps, [
{ gen_serial, { git, "https://github.com/igorclark/gen_serial.git", { tag, "0.1.0" } } }
] }.
The backend (native code) is under c_src and can be compiled on UNIX.
See docs for API documentation.