Software Overview

Future Lab provides software under the terms of the GNU General Public License (GPL). For a complete review of these concepts, refer to:

- GPL software and support
- Our values

The GPL software provided by Future Lab is written in C and Tcl. I use C because it is fairly portable (if written correctly) and compact. I use Tcl because it is multi-platform and graphical applications can be built using it.

Future Lab GPL software is like building a house. Everything is built upon the foundation and many pieces interconnect. For this reason, a natural drawback is that pieces cannot easily be removed from the software.

Most applications are offered in a single user version and a client/server version. The client/server version is built using one of two methods of interprocess communication across multiple platforms:

- TCP connection oriented iterative
  - Any Unix/Linux/BSD that supports Berkeley sockets (BSD)
  - Windows (95/98/Me/NT/2000/2003/XP/Vista) using Winsock (version 1.1 minimum)
- QNX message passing
  - QNX 4.x

Future Lab C software is offered in a source only version and a source with already compiled executable/binary version. Not all platforms will have a source with executable/binary version as I do not have access to all platforms.

This next section will briefly describe the GPL modules.

# Library Modules

The foundation of my GPL software is the library. The library is made up of 22 modules:

- string parsing
- file input/output (I/O)
- personal logging API
- system logging API
- system logging message API
- client IPC API
- server IPC API
- TCP low level
- TCP configuration (obsolete)
- IP addressing
- directory scanning
- timesync main API
- timesync Code API
- fixed-point math API
- math conversion API
- date/time API
- application initialization/notification API
- weather station library
- miscellaneous library
- logging manager library
- directory tree removal API
- path parsing

# Database Engine and API's

This category consists of the database engine module and interface API modules. The database engine is based on variable field/record length and typeless data. The following modules are included:

- database engine
- single user API
- client/server API
- server session table management
- catalog table management
- server replication management
- error messages
- fixed-point read/write
- import library
- configuration
  - single user configuration API
  - client/server configuration API

# Socloc and API's

This section deals with the socket locate information. The important components are:

- Socloc overview
- socloc API overview
  - main socloc API
  - configuration API
  - error message API
  - parse/build connect string API
  - socloc server communications API

# GPL Applications

# Tcl Software Overview

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