Go Library for Linux GPIB

The linuxgpib package provides an idiomatic Go interface to the Linux GPIB C library. It's handy if you have vintage electronics test equipment on an IEEE-488 bus and want to control it or perform data acquisition using the Go language.

Usage

You can use Go's standard Reader and Writer interfaces to communicate with instruments. A simple transaction to read the identity of a SCPI device at address 22 looks like:

d, err := linuxgpib.NewDevice(0, 22)
_, err = fmt.Fprintln(d, "*IDN?")
result, err := bufio.NewReader(d).ReadString('\n')
d.Close()

For a more complete version (with logging and error handling!) see the identify command in this repository.

Building

To build your application that imports linuxgpib you need to install the Linux GPIB userspace C library per its instructions.

It's generally easiest to install the C library systemwide into its default prefix, which is /usr/local. No special flags to the Go compiler should be needed in that case.

If a systemwide install is not possible (such as when you don't have root), you can ./configure it with an alternative --prefix=/some/path and then set variables in the environment before invoking go build:

• CGO_CFLAGS=-I/some/path/include
• CGO_LDFLAGS=-L/some/path/lib

Running

To run your application you should install the userspace C library described above and the kernel driver. You'll also need to configure a board and pass its minor number (aka index) to the linuxgpib Go code.

In certain scenarios the dynamic link loader may fail to find libgpib.so.0. If that happens to you, give it an extra hint with an environment variable to the path where you installed the userspace C library:

• LD_LIBRARY_PATH=/usr/local/lib

Notes

This is not an officially supported Google product.