All,
After doing some ‘proof of concept’ with the VOR receiver (the phase
comparator still isn’t perfect, but bad weather has given me a marginal
signal recently, so it’s on hold for a tad), I’ve been really impressed
with
gnuradio. It’s only flaw it seems to me is that it’s difficult for joe
average to install/use on their PC. So here’s how I’d like to
contribute:
1- Tweak the C++ libraries so that they’ll compile under windows
natively (MSVC++ 2005 specifically)
2- Add ‘shims’ to allow access to the C++ classes through .NET
managed
code on windows
3- Convert select python applications to C#
4- Build a standalone install package (easy once 1/2/3 are done)
I believe I’ve got a concept that will extend the functionality to a
native
windows environment without complicating the linux build process. On my
dev
machine, I’ve set up a gnuradio source tree (3.1.2), and added a
directory
‘gnuradio.net’. The .vsproj files etc go there, as well as any managed
code
(both Managed C++ and C# depending). The .vsproj files link to the
primary
source code which remains in it’s original directory. This way those
that
are uninterested in windows code (probably the majority) can ignore the
‘.net’ directory completely and be undisturbed. Of course I’m adding
some
#ifdef _MSC_VER to some of the code, but so far it’s not bad at all
IMHO.
Most annoying thing seems to be UNIX open() vs Win32 fopen() and fil_des
integers vs FILE pointers. Otherwise the fixes seem reasonably
straightforward so far. (Quick caveat, I’m not a native C++ developer
(pardon the pun), so there may be better techniques than what I am
using)
From what I’ve gathered, the makefile format is different between GCC
and
MSVC, so it seemed trying to keep the build method consistent between
the
two would probably cause more drama than what it’s worth, so I just
stuck
with the .vsproj method
I’ve already converted usrp, omnithread, and most of gnuradio-core
(general,
gengen, filter, runtime), so it certainly seems do-able. The USRP code
I
was able to build completely and run some basic code, validating that I
could talk to the USRP successfully via C# using the usrp_standard_rx
class.
The reason I’m preferring C# to porting/reusing the Python is that most
of
the Python code I’ve looked at so far is pretty straightforward
object-oriented high-level code, and porting it to C# (or VB.NET etc
etc)
will be pretty trivial, giving us 2 advantages, 1- the power of the .NET
winforms interface, and 2- it’s easier to build a stand-alone binary
install
that doesn’t require any additional install work by the end user.
So, please let me know if this effort is something the community is
interested in. If so, I guess I need the copyright/permissions
electronic
form to start the formal part off?
Geof
P.S. Thanks to Andrew R. for his posts to the wiki on this concept,
it
saved me a couple steps!
