[aprssig] aprsd replacements

[Heikki Hannikainen]

   Hi,

On Sun, 1 Jun 2008, Patrick Domack wrote:

(... about aprsd ...)
> The issue with this is, the code has been dead for the last 5years or
> so, and has quiet a few bugs and memory issues.
>
> Based on the issues, and the amount of work to track down issues
> (there isn't much consistancy) I think I am just going design a new
> program and start working on bringing it up.

   There are at least two existing igate projects, aprsg and aprx. Both are 
in operational use already, and seem to work fine. They're lightweight 
(don't allocate lots of memory like aprsd does) and simple (only contain 
the code required to implement an rx-only igate). Both are aiming to 
implement the tx side for messaging, and some of the transmitting code 
exists, but the functionality isn't usable yet. They do not listen for 
connections on TCP sockets, so they cannot act as APRS-IS servers, and do 
not aim to do so. They're small enough to run on tiny embedded Linux boxes 
like the Cisco/Linksys NSLU2 (I have set up one of these myself).

   aprx has a wiki page at http://wiki.ham.fi/Aprx.en (with download 
links).

   aprsg can be downloaded at http://oh3tr.ele.tut.fi/~oh2gve/aprsg/source/ 
(the very informative wiki page at http://wiki.ham.fi/Aprsg is 
unfortunately available in Finnish only).

   aprsg is written in C++, and it requires wxWidgets and it's 
Communication Toolbox (wxtcb) library. aprx is plain C and doesn't depend 
on libraries beyond basic POSIX libc. They're for Linux, but should be 
easily portable to other Unix-like systems.

   Instead of starting another igate server coding project, you might be 
interested in extending one of these open source projects. aprsg is 
licensed under the GPL, aprx has a BSD license (even more free). Of 
course, more options usually brings in some healthy competition. :)

   - Hessu, OH7LZB