About TEKlib

TEKlib is an open-source library project under the terms of the free MIT software license. By picking from its facilities, it can serve as a

• middleware
• embedded operating system
• virtual OS target for applications and libraries that would have to be ported to many individual hosts
• component architecture and hosting environment that allows plug-ins and their hosts to be written in a platform-independent way

TEKlib is designed to be largely agnostic as to whether it runs in a shared or seperate address spaces. Its freestanding nature, small footprint and absence of global data recommend it as a layer for portability and code reuse in a wide range of environments; it can be used in userspace applications, kernel modules, plug-ins, in device drivers and on raw hardware.

Features

• Recursive memory management: Allocators can be stacked on top of each other and carry attributes for automatic cleanup and thread-safety; special allocators can implement tighter packing, custom allocation strategies, leak tracking, or operate in user-supplied memory
• TEKlib threads (tasks) are 'heavy-weight', or process-like. They are equipped with means for local storage, individual file descriptors, a reserved set of signals and endpoints for communication. User signals can be synchronized on individually, in sets or by using messages and I/O packets
• TEKlib provides strict asynchronoucy and atomicity throughout its API; the core as a whole never blocks due to latency inflicted by I/O, and it never imposes polling as an inevitable mechanism
• The module interface is inherently thread-safe and provides a referencing scheme for any number of tasks requesting a component, library or device driver at the same time
• Recursive mutexes and an extension thereof, atoms, allow for lookup by name, locking attempts and shared resource arbitration
• An asynchronous device driver interface can be utilized by applications for overlapping I/O; using this interface, TEKlib also implements a portable timer device
• File systems are an extension to device drivers. TEKlib provides a file system namespace for any number of mountpoints (devices) and logical roots (assigns). Handlers are modules implementing roots in the file system; they can be mounted explicitely or initialize themselves on demand. In hosted scenarios, the file system is initially populated with a default handler to occupy the root node, thus abstracting from a host's native file system.
• Inbuilt data structures such as doubly-linked lists, arrays of key/value pairs, nodes with userdata and destructor, hashes and callback hooks
• TEKlib comes with its own, entirely self-contained makefile generator.

Availability

• TEKlib is freely available for free software as well as academic and commercial purposes. See COPYRIGHT for details.
• TEKlib can be downloaded from http://www.teklib.org/ .

Installation

• Supported make tools are pmake and gmake.
• Type make at the top-level directory to see a list of possible configuration variables and build targets.
• Adjust the configuration in the Makefile, or pass variables to your make tool; for example, using pmake:

  # make HOST=fbsd release
  

  Using bash and GNU make:

  # HOST=linux make release
  

Authors and contact

• TEKlib was originally designed by Timm S. Mueller, and over the years received support from a number of contributors, in particular, but not limited to: Daniel Adler, Daniel Trompetter, Franciska Schulze, Frank Pagels, Tobias Schwinger, Michael Taubert
• Send comments, questions and bug reports to teklib at teklib.org .