4 // Fraunhofer Institute for Open Communication Systems (FOKUS)
5 // Competence Center NETwork research (NET), St. Augustin, GERMANY
6 // Stefan Bund <g0dil@berlios.de>
8 // This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify
9 // it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by
10 // the Free Software Foundation; either version 2 of the License, or
11 // (at your option) any later version.
13 // This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful,
14 // but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of
15 // MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the
16 // GNU General Public License for more details.
18 // You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License
19 // along with this program; if not, write to the
20 // Free Software Foundation, Inc.,
21 // 59 Temple Place - Suite 330, Boston, MA 02111-1307, USA.
23 /** \mainpage SENF: The Simple and Extensible Network Framework
25 The SENF Simple and Extensible Network Framework aims to be a complete set of libraries to
26 facilitate the development of network applications focusing on network protocols on the layers
27 below the application layer. However, the framework includes many general purpose utilities and
28 will be expedient to use well beyond its primary objective.
32 The main goals of this library are (in no particular order):
34 \li modular framework design
35 \li utilizing the power of modern C++
36 \li very low overhead for frequently called members
40 \section start Getting started
42 To get started using this library, begin by checking out the code from the <a
43 href="http://developer.berlios.de/svn/?group_id=7489">BerliOS SVN repository</a>. You may find
44 help on using the library at '\ref senf_usage'. If you are interested in SENF, feel free to subscribe
45 to the <a href="http://developer.berlios.de/mail/?group_id=7489">SENF mailing lists</a>. If you
46 want to contribute, read the docs and \e please adhere to the \ref senf_conventions.
48 \see \ref senf_usage\n
49 <a href="../../Examples/doc/html/index.html">Examples</a>
52 /** \page senf_usage Using the SENF framework
54 The SENF Framework is a collection of loosely coupled modules. The libraries are heavily object
55 oriented and template based. For compatibility reasons, the libraries are therefore built
56 together with every project making use of the framework.
58 When starting a new project based on the SENF framework, it is advisable, to make use of the
59 SENFSCons build environment and use SVN to manage the code repository. This is the
60 configuration, described in this documentation.
62 \see \ref senf_build \n
64 \ref senf_components \n
67 \section senf_preliminaries Preliminaries
69 Before starting the development, make sure to fulfill the following requirements:
71 \li GNU g++, version at least 3.4
72 \li The Boost libraries (http://www.boost.org)
73 \li The SCons build tool (http://www.scons.org)
75 If you want to build the documentation, you additionally need
77 \li Doxygen (http://www.doxygen.org)
78 \li The \c dia diagram editor (http://www.gnome.org/projects/dia/)
79 \li HTML \c tidy (http://tidy.sourceforge.net/)
80 \li The \c xsltproc XSLT processor (http://xmlsoft.org/XSLT/xsltproc2.html)
81 \li The \c graphviz library (http://www.graphviz.org)
84 The library is only tested with gcc-3.4 and 4.0 on Linux. On other POSIX platforms with a BSD
85 Socket API, the library should be usable, possibly with some tweaking (except for the Scheduler,
86 which relies on \c epoll)
88 \section senf_compiler_options Compiler and Linker Options
90 If SENF is compiled in debug mode (SENF_DEBUG is defined), exception messages will
91 automatically include a stack backtrace. For this to work, you need to add the -rdynamic option
92 to all link commands. This feature depends on gcc and the GNU-libc.
94 It is <B>very important</B> that both the SENF library and the application using it are either
95 compiled with or without this compiler switch (-DSENF_DEBUG). Otherwise, the compiler will emit
96 error messages which might be hard to debug.
100 /** \page senf_build Building the SENF framework
102 This procedure will test building the complete framework including the unit tests and the
103 Sniffer test application. This build is \e not needed to use the framework since every project
104 will include the full SENF source code itself (via Subversion).
106 After you have successfully built the library tests, you can continue to setup your own project
109 \see \ref senf_setup \n
110 \ref senf_components \n
113 \section senf_checkout Getting the code
115 To access the code, check out the code from the BerliOS repository. Change to your development
116 directory and use the following subversion command
119 $ svn checkout http://svn.berlios.de/svnroot/repos/senf/trunk senf
122 This will create a new directory \c senf within the current directory. For further documentation
123 on the use of Subversion, see the \c svn man-page or the subversion homepage at
124 http://subversion.tigris.org. A very good introduction and reference to subversion is available
125 at http://svnbook.red-bean.com.
127 \section senf_compile Building
129 To build the library, execute all unit tests and build the Sniffer test application, use
136 in the \c senf directory. This assumes, that you want to build the library with your default gcc
137 and requires the boost libraries to be available in the system include paths. If this is not the
138 case, you can take a look at <tt>SConfig.template</tt> file. Copy this file to <tt>SConfig</tt>
139 and comment out all the variables you don't want to change (The \e values in the template file
140 are just arbitrary examples).
143 /** \page senf_setup Setting up a new project using SENF
145 The most simple way to use SENF for now is to checkout the svn repository and build SENF
146 yourselves. After you have built SENF, reference your SENF build directory from your build
147 environment. The most flexible way to do this, is to use a symbolic link to your SENF build.
149 Here an example \c SConstruct file for a project using SENF. This script expects SENF to be
150 found in the <tt>%senf</tt> sub-directory of the directory, where the \c SConstruct file is
151 found. This may either be a SENF checkout (if managing your project via subversion, you can use
152 <tt>svn:externals</tt> for this) or a symbolic link to your SENF checkout.
159 LIBS = [ 'senf', 'iberty', 'boost_regex', 'boost_iostreams' ],
160 CXXFLAGS = [ '-Wall', '-Woverloaded-virtual', '-Wno-long-long' ],
164 # If we have a symbolic link 'senf' pointing to our own senf build, use it (and assume
165 # it's in debug mode)
166 if os.path.exists('senf'):
167 print "\nUsing SENF in 'senf'\n"
170 CPPDEFINES = [ 'SENF_DEBUG' ],
171 LIBPATH = [ 'senf' ],
172 CPPPATH = [ 'senf/include' ],
173 CXXFLAGS = [ '-O0', '-g', '-fno-inline' ],
174 LINKFLAGS = [ '-g', '-rdynamic' ],
177 env.Execute([ 'scons -C senf libsenf.a' ])
179 print "\nUsing system installed SENF\n"
181 # replace 'mytarget' with the name of your target executable
184 source = glob.glob('*.cc'),
188 This script automatically set's up the build correctly when using a self-compiled SENF in debug
189 mode (which is the default mode):
190 \li It links in all the required libraries in the correct order: First \c libsenf, then the
191 other needed libraries \c liberty, \c libboost_regex and \c libboost_iostreams.
192 \li It defines the <tt>SENF_DEBUG</tt> preprocessor symbol correctly
193 \li It correctly sets the include and library path
194 \li It adds sensible debug flags
195 \li It adds <tt>-rdynamic</tt> to the link command. This is needed to get a nice backtrace from
197 \li It automatically rebuilds SENF if needed
199 \see \ref senf_components \n
203 /** \page senf_components The SENF modules
205 The framework is made up of several modular components. When using the library, it is possible
206 to selectively choose to use only a subset of the implemented modules.
208 \see \ref senf_overview
210 \section libPPI libPPI: Packet Processing Infrastructure
212 The Packet Processing Infrastructure implements a modular framework for implementing packet
213 oriented network applications. The library provides a larget set of pre-defined modules as well
214 as the necessary helpers to implement application specific processing modules.
216 \see <a href="../../PPI/doc/html/index.html">libPPI API reference</a>
218 \section libSocket libSocket: C++ abstraction of the BSD socket API
220 This library provides a high performance and object oriented abstraction of the standard socket
221 API. It utilizes a flexible and extensible policy based design. The library provides predefined
222 types for the important socket types (UDP and TCP sockets etc) including raw and packet sockets.
224 \see <a href="../../Socket/doc/html/index.html">libSocket API reference</a>
226 \section libPackets libPackets: Network packet manipulation
228 This library provides a very flexible infrastructure to parse, create and otherwise manipulate
229 packetized network data. Included is a library of several protocol parsers covering the basic
230 IPv4 and IPv6 network protocols down to the Ethernet layer.
232 \see <a href="../../Packets/doc/html/index.html">libPackets API reference</a>
234 \section libScheduler libScheduler: Asynchronous event handling
236 The scheduler library provides an object oriented interface to the standard UNIX \c select type
237 event dispatcher. It is based on the high performance \c epoll system call. It provides support
238 for read/write events as well as simple timer based events.
240 \see <a href="../../Scheduler/doc/html/index.html">libScheduler API reference</a>
242 \section libUtils libUtils: Collection of arbitrary utilities
244 This library is used be most all of the other modules for miscellaneous tools and utilities. We
247 \li Simple functions to manage daemon processes
248 \li Standard exception classes
249 \li senf::intrusive_refcount to simplify the implementation of classes usable with
251 \li boost::bind extensions
252 \li An interface to the \c g++ demangler integrated with type_info
253 \li Typedefs and rudimentary methods to simplify handling high-resolution time values
255 \see <a href="../../Utils/doc/html/index.html">libUtils API reference</a>
257 \section senfscons SENFSCons, the SENF build environment
259 SENF relies on SCons (http://www.scons.org) to build. To further simplify the common tasks, SENF
260 includes a library of custom routines and builders comprising a very concise build
261 environment. Included are a number of templates to help bootstrapping a new project or
264 \see <a href="../../senfscons/doc/html/index.html">SENFSCons reference</a>
267 /** \page senf_overview Introduction to the framework
269 The SENF framework is relatively complex and makes use of advanced features of the C++
270 language. To make the most efficient use of the framework, you should have at least a basic
271 understanding of C++ templates and the standard library concepts.
273 The library implementation at places makes heavy use of advanced template techniques and relies
274 on some very advanced template libraries from Boost. The aim was however for the \e external
275 interface of the library to be as simple as possible without sacrificing important functionality
276 or adversely impacting the runtime performance.
278 As already mentioned several times, the library relies on Boost (http://www.boost.org) as a
279 generic library of high quality reusable C++ components. It also makes frequent use of the
280 standard library. It is designed, to integrate well into both libraries and to use the same
283 \section senf_startup Getting starting developing with SENF
285 To introduce the framework and it's general structure, a simple example application is provided
286 in the SENF repository in the \c Sniffer module. Peruse this example to get a first look at how
289 When building a network Application with SENF, you will use several modules:
291 \li Use the <a href="../../Socket/doc/html/index.html">Socket library</a> for network
292 communication needs. This library includes support for raw and packet sockets to allow low
293 level network access.
294 \li Use the <a href="../../Scheduler/doc/html/index.html">Scheduler library</a> to coordinate
295 the asynchronous event processing. This drastically reduces the number of threads needed in
296 your application and will greatly enhance the overall responsiveness.
297 \li To interpret low level network packets, use the <a
298 href="../../Packets/doc/html/index.html">Packets library</a>. This library will provide
299 efficient and convenient access to all protocol fields. It supports parsing as well as
300 modifying and creating packets. It has default support for the most important internet
301 protocols and is highly extensible with new protocols.
302 \li Go over the <a href="../../Utils/doc/html/index.html">Utils library</a>. It contains small
303 helpers to simplify tasks like daemonization, exception handling, debugging and so on.
305 The simplest way to get started is: copy the Sniffer application and start to modify it.
307 \see <a href="../../Examples/doc/html/index.html">Examples</a> \n
308 \ref senf_components \n
311 \section senf_conventions Coding Conventions
313 Here we have laid down the coding conventions used throughout the SENF framework. Please ad here
314 to these conventions when changing or adding code. If you use emacs, you can use the C++ IDE for
315 emacs from http://g0dil.de which greatly simplifies following these conventions.
317 \subsection senf_conventions_file_naming File Naming
319 Files should be named according to the main class they define. A single header file should
320 define only one main class. Exceptions to this rule are OK.
323 This simplifies finding the implementation/header for a given class and also reduces the
324 size of each single file.
326 The implementation is divided into a number of different files:
328 <table class="glossary"> <tr><td>\c .h</td><td>C public header</td></tr>
330 <tr><td>\c .hh</td><td>C++ public header</td></tr>
332 <tr><td>\c .ih</td><td>C++ internal header used only by the implementation. This header will
333 probably be included indirectly by the public header but is not meant to be perused by the
334 library user</td></tr>
336 <tr><td>\c .c</td><td>C implementation</td></tr>
338 <tr><td>\c .cc</td><td>C++ implementation of non-inline non-template functions and
341 <tr><td>\c .ct</td><td>C++ implementation of non-inline template functions and members</td></tr>
343 <tr><td>\c .cci</td><td>C++ implementation of inline non-template functions and
346 <tr><td>\c .cti</td><td>C++ implementation of inline template functions and members</td></tr>
348 <tr><td>\c .mpp</td><td>Special include file used for external iteration by the
349 Boost.Preprocessor library</td></tr> </table>
352 There are two part's to this: First, separating the implementation of inlines and templates
353 out of the header file makes the header file much easier to read. This is important, since
354 the header file will be used as a reference by the developers.
356 Separating inline from non-inline members is used together with the \c prefix_ convention
357 below to ensure the correct placement of inline vs non-inline members in the source
358 code. The C++ language requires, that inline members must be included into \e every
359 compilation unit, non-inline members however must be included \e only in one compilation
360 unit. Placing the inline members into a separate file allows to automate this: Simply moving
361 an implementation from one of the inline files into one of the non-inline files will change
362 the type of implementation accordingly.
364 \subsection senf_conventions_type_naming Type Naming
366 SENF prefers the use of the CapitalziedLettersToSeparateWords convention for class names. In
367 this case, class names must start with a capital letter. There are some exceptions to this rule:
368 Types which define new basic data types to be used like other built-in types may be named using
369 lowercase letters plus underscores. Also, if a type or class is directly related to some other
370 library (STL or Boost) which uses the underscore convention, it might be more sensible to follow
371 this convention. This is open to debate.
374 Naming types with capital letters nicely gives a visual clue, that a symbol is a type
375 name. This can also be used by the editor to highlight type names correctly. Additionally,
376 this convention is compact and does not add additional or repeated overhead.
378 \subsection senf_conventions_impl Implementation
380 Only in very few places, SENF allows the use of inline implementations (not to be confused with
381 inline functions). An \e implementation is inline, if it is written directly into the class
382 definition in the header file. Again there are exceptions to this rule but they are very few:
383 \li When defining simple exception classes, the 'what()' member may be defined inline if it
384 returns a string constant.
385 \li It may be OK to use inline implementations for one-line implementations in internal
387 \li The Packet library allows inline implementations for the definition of parsers since doing
388 so outside the declaration just gets to verbose and parsers definitions are quite length but
389 very simple and straight forward.
392 Implementing members inline inside the class declaration makes the declaration much harder
393 to read. Since the declaration in the header file will be used as a reference by the
394 developer, the header files should be as readable as possible.
396 Every function or method implementation in one of the implementation files must \e always be
397 prefixed with \c prefix_. This symbol is defined at the beginning of the file and undefined at
398 the end. The symbol must be defined to be \c inline in the \c .cti and \c .cci files and must be
399 defined empty in the \c .cc and \c .ct files.
402 Together with splitting inlines and non-inlines into separate files, this allows to
403 automatically include the inline definitions at the right places. See above.
405 Private data members are named with a trailing underscore character.
408 This helps distinguishing local variables from parameter names. The trailing underscore
409 does not interfere with other naming conventions and is allowed by the standard (underscore
410 at the beginning of the name are problematic since some classes of names beginning with an
411 underscore are reserved for the standard library implementation)
418 // :vim:textwidth=100
419 // c-file-style: "senf"
420 // indent-tabs-mode: nil
421 // ispell-local-dictionary: "american"
422 // compile-command: "scons doc"