fastcat

C++ EtherCAT Device Command & Control Library

Documentation

To learn more about fastcat, checkout the following documents:

• Fastcat Primer
• Complete list of Fastcat Device Configuration YAML Parameters
• 2021 Aeroconf paper submission Fastcat: An Open-Source Library for Composable EtherCAT Control Systems
• README for build details
• The API documentation (build locally using doxygen - Github hosting still a work-in-progress)

Prerequisites

Fastcat has ben tested on Ubuntu 20.04, though it should work on older versions of Ubuntu with minor revisions to these steps.

$ sudo apt install libyaml-cpp-dev libreadline-dev doxygen python3-pip
$ sudo pip3 install pyaml cogapp graphviz ipython==7.9

Building

To build fastcat from source:

$ git clone git@github.com:nasa-jpl/fastcat.git
$ cd fastcat
$ mkdir build
$ cd build
$ cmake ..
$ make

Tests

The following commands will execute the unit tests:

$ cd build
$ cmake ..
$ make
$ make test
$ make memcheck  # note valgrind is required to perform memory checking

API Documentation

# Install dependencies for Ubuntu
$ sudo apt install doxygen graphviz

# use the build system to generate the code for you!
$ cd build
$ make doc

The output documentation is created in the directory doxygen_html and can be opened by any web browser from the root index.html webpage.

Using fastcat in your Project

We recommend using the CMake FetchContent utility to acquire fastcat and its upstream dependencies.

include(FetchContent)
FetchContent_Declare(fastcat
    GIT_REPOSITORY git@github.com:nasa-jpl/fastcat.git
    GIT_TAG v0.4.3
    )
FetchContent_MakeAvailable(fastcat)

It is always recommend you specify your dependency to a tagged reldroppingease (GIT_TAG v0.4.3) so updates to master cannot break your build (NOT GIT_TAG master).

Semantic Versioning

fastcat uses Semantic versioning to help applications reason about the software as updates are continuously rolled out. Tailored to fastcat, the Semver rules are as follows:

• Major Versions will denote changes to the API or YAML Configuration parameters, which may break some user applications.
• Minor Versions will denote new features or driver additions that do not break user applications.
• Patch Versions will denote bug fixes or minor improvements and will not break user applications.

Violations of these rules will be considered errors and should be patched immediately. Please open an issue if you find a violation.

Note

Major version 0 indicates the API is still considered experimental and subject to change with any new release. These rules will be strictly followed after a Major version 1 release.