Commit 2a9a7ddf845f5de8bd935a6280ddf013a3afb9a2

Authored by Stéphane Raimbault
1 parent 1224ec64

Improved README file

Showing 1 changed file with 48 additions and 13 deletions
README.md
... ... @@ -4,20 +4,24 @@ A groovy modbus library
4 4 Overview
5 5 --------
6 6  
7   -libmodbus is a free software library to send/receive data with a
8   -device which respects the Modbus protocol. This library can use a
9   -serial port or an Ethernet connection.
  7 +libmodbus is a free software library to send/receive data with a device which
  8 +respects the Modbus protocol. This library can use a serial port or an Ethernet
  9 +connection.
10 10  
11   -The functions included in the library have been derived from the
12   -Modicon Modbus Protocol Reference Guide which can be obtained from
13   -Schneider at [www.schneiderautomation.com](http://www.schneiderautomation.com).
  11 +The functions included in the library have been derived from the Modicon Modbus
  12 +Protocol Reference Guide which can be obtained from Schneider at
  13 +[www.schneiderautomation.com](http://www.schneiderautomation.com).
14 14  
15   -The license of libmodbus is LGPL v2.1 or later and the licence of programs in
  15 +The license of libmodbus is *LGPL v2.1 or later* and the licence of programs in
16 16 tests directory is GPL v3.
17 17  
18   -The documentation is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike
  18 +The documentation is available as manual pages (`man libmodbus` to read general
  19 +description and list of available functions) or Web pages
  20 +[www.libmodbus.org/documentation/](http://libmodbus.org/documentation/). The
  21 +documentation is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike
19 22 License 3.0 (Unported) (<http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/>).
20 23  
  24 +
21 25 The official website is [www.libmodbus.org](http://www.libmodbus.org).
22 26  
23 27 The library is written in C and designed to run on Linux, Mac OS X, FreeBSD and
... ... @@ -26,14 +30,27 @@ QNX and Windows.
26 30 Installation
27 31 ------------
28 32  
  33 +You will only need to install automake, autoconf, libtool and a C compiler (gcc
  34 +or clang) to compile the library and asciidoc and xmlto to generate the
  35 +documentation (optional).
  36 +
29 37 To install, just run the usual dance, `./configure && make install`. Run
30   -`./autogen.sh` first to generate the `configure` script.
  38 +`./autogen.sh` first to generate the `configure` script if required.
  39 +
  40 +You can change installation directory with prefix option, eg. `./configure
  41 +--prefix=/usr/local/`. You have to check that the installation library path is
  42 +properly set up on your system (`/etc/ld.so.conf.d`) and library cache is up to
  43 +date (run `ldconfig` as root if required).
  44 +
  45 +The library provides a `libmodbus.pc` file to use with `pkg-config` to ease your
  46 +program compilation and linking.
31 47  
32 48 If you want to compile with Microsoft Visual Studio, you need to install
33 49 <http://code.google.com/p/msinttypes/> to fill the absence of stdint.h.
34 50  
35 51 To compile under Windows, install [MinGW](http://www.mingw.org/) and MSYS then
36   -select the common packages (gcc, automake, libtool, etc).
  52 +select the common packages (gcc, automake, libtool, etc). The directory
  53 +`./src/win32/` contains a Visual C project.
37 54  
38 55 To compile under OS X with [homebrew](http://mxcl.github.com/homebrew/), you will need
39 56 to install the following dependencies first: `brew install autoconf automake libtool`.
... ... @@ -46,10 +63,28 @@ code to fit your needs (it&#39;s Free Software :).
46 63  
47 64 See *tests/README* for a description of each program.
48 65  
  66 +For a quick test of libmodbus, you can run the following programs in two shells:
  67 +
  68 +1. ./unit-test-server
  69 +2. ./unit-test-client
  70 +
  71 +By default, all TCP unit tests will be executed (see --help for options).
  72 +
49 73 Report a Bug
50 74 ------------
51 75  
52   -To report a bug, you can:
  76 +Before reporting a bug, take care to read the documentation (RTFM!) and to
  77 +provide enough information:
  78 +
  79 +1. libmodbus version
  80 +2. OS/environment/architecture
  81 +3. libmodbus backend (TCP, RTU, IPv6)
  82 +3. Modbus messages when running in debug mode (`man modbus_set_debug`)
  83 +
  84 +To report your problem, you can:
  85 +
  86 +* fill a bug report on the issue tracker <http://github.com/stephane/libmodbus/issues>.
  87 +* or send an email to the libmodbus mailing list [libmodbus@googlegroups.com](https://groups.google.com/forum/#!forum/libmodbus).
53 88  
54   -* fill a bug report on the issue tracker <http://github.com/stephane/libmodbus/issues>
55   -* or send an email to stephane.raimbault@gmail.com
  89 +If your prefer live talk when your're looking for help or to offer contribution,
  90 +there is also a channel called #libmodbus on Freenode.
... ...