The libssh2lv project is a LabVIEW™-friendly C "wrapper" library for the libssh2 library. The library is intended to be used with the Call Library Function node. This provides SSH client functionality to LabVIEW as a Dynamic Link Library (DLL, Windows), Dynamic Library (Dylib, macOS), and/or Shared Object (SO, Linux).
A single ZIP archive containing the pre-compiled/built shared libraries for all of the desktop platforms listed in the Build section is provided with each release. These pre-compiled/built shared libraries include software developed by the OpenSSL Project for use in the OpenSSL Toolkit.
- Download the ZIP archive for the latest release. Note, this is not the
source code ZIP file. The ZIP archive containing the pre-compiled/built
shared libraries will be labeled:
libssh2lv_#.#.#.zip, where#.#.#is the version number for the release. - Extract, or unzip, the ZIP archive.
- Copy and paste all or the platform-specific shared libraries to one of the following locations on disk:
| Platform | Destination |
|---|---|
| Windows | C:\Windows\System32 |
| macOS | /usr/local/lib |
| Linux | /usr/local/lib |
Ensure all of the following dependencies are installed and up-to-date before proceeding:
- CMake 3.4.x, or newer
- Tools for Visual Studio 2019, Windows Only
- XCode Command Line Tools, macOS Only
- Git
- Doxygen, Documentation only
- Strawberry Perl or ActivePerl, Windows Only
The OpenSSL and libssh2 dependencies will automatically be downloaded and built as part of the build process. This is to ensure the correct version is used and that these dependencies are statically linked to the eventual libssh2lv shared library. Statically linking the dependencies avoids having to distribute separate shared libraries for OpenSSL and libssh2 on each of the supported desktop platforms (Windows, macOS, and Linux).
For NI Linux RT, the libssh2 shared library must be installed on the platform.
The libssh2lv shared library is not statically compiled with the libssh2
dependencies for the NI Linux RT operating system. Instead, a libssh2 package
is available from a sibling project that can be installed using the opkg
package manager that is shipped with the NI Linux RT operating system.
The first build of the project on a system will take longer because the OpenSSL
and libssh2 libraries will be downloaded and built. These dependencies can be
found in the .deps folder.
The Microsoft Visual C++ Build Tools 2019) should have installed a x64 Native Build Tools command prompt. Start the x64 Native Build Tools command prompt.
This ensures the appropriate C compiler is available to CMake to build the
library. Run the following commands to obtain a copy of the source code and
build both the 32-bit and 64-bit DLLs with a Release configuration:
C:\> git clone https://github.com/fieldrndservices/libssh2lv.git
C:\> cd libssh2lv
C:\> build.bat
The DLLs (libssh2lv.dll and libssh2lv-x64.dll) will be available in the build32\bin and build64\bin folders.
Ensure the command-line tools for XCode have been installed along with git-scm before proceeding.
git clone https://github.com/fieldrndservices/libssh2lv.git
cd libssh2lv
mkdir build && cd build
cmake ..
cmake --build .The dynamic library (libssh2lv.dylib) will be available in the bin folder within the build folder.
If running on Ubuntu or similar Debian)-based distribution, ensure the build-essential, cmake, and git packages are installed before proceeding. These can be installed with the following command from a terminal:
sudo apt-get install build-essential cmake gitStart a terminal, and run the following commands to obtain a copy of the source code from the repository and build the shared object (so):
git clone https://github.com/fieldrndservices/libssh2lv.git
cd libssh2lv
mkdir build && cd build
cmake ..
cmake --build .The shared object (libssh2lv.so) will be available in the bin folder.
The recommended procedure for building the shared object for NI Linux RT is to use and follow the build instructions for the libssh2lv-nilrt-ipk project.
Additionally, while NI provides a cross-compiler for their Real-Time (RT) Linux distribution, it is relatively difficult, if not impossible, to configure and use the cross-compiler to build the shared object. The shared object requires the libssh2 and libcrypto libraries to be statically linked to the libssh2lv library, but the build procedure for these two dependencies are not easily ported to the Eclipse build system. An alternative is to dynamically link the dependencies to the libssh2lv library, but this requires the libssh2.so and libcrypto.so libraries to be present and available in the cross-compiler distribution, which they are not. Thus, it is easier to configure a CompactRIO (cRIO) running the NI Linux RT distribution as a suitable build environment and build the shared object on the cRIO with the following steps:
-
Power on the cRIO.
-
Connect the cRIO to a host computer.
-
Download an archive file of the libssh2lv source code.
-
Transfer the libssh2lv source code archive to the cRIO. This can be done using FTP if installed or SCP.
-
Log into the cRIO via a SSH client
-
Navigate to the libssh2lv source code archive on the cRIO.
-
Execute the following commands to build the shared library, note the version numbers maybe different:
unzip libssh2lv_0.1.0.zip cd libssh2lv_0.1.0 mkdir build && cd build cmake -DBUILD_DEPS=OFF .. cmake --build .
The shared object (libssh2lv.so) will be available in the bin folder.
Doxygen is used to build the Application Programming Interface (API) documentation. Ensure the latest version is installed then enter the following command from the root directory of the project to build the API docs:
mkdir -p build/doc
doxygen doc/DoxyfileThe output will be in the build/doc/html folder of the root directory of the
project. If on Windows, the following commands can be used:
C:\> mkdir build\doc
C:\> doxygen doc\DoxyfileThe output can be viewed by opening the build/doc/html/index.html file in a
web browser.
All of the tests are located in the tests folder. The tests are organized in
"modules", where an executable is created that tests each source "module". By
default, the test are not built. To build the tests, the -DBUILD_TESTS=ON
flag must be added to the cmake .. build step. Each test executable is located
in the bin\tests folder of the build directory and they can be run
independently.
If the ctest, or make test on non-Windows systems, commands are used after
building the tests to run the tests, then the ctest test runner framework is
used to run the tests. This provides a very high level summary of the results of
running all tests. Since the tests are organized into "modules" and suites, the
ctest command only indicates that a test within a module and suite has failed.
It does not indicate which test has failed. To investigate the failed test,
the executable in the bin\tests folder for test module should be run.
Start a terminal command prompt and navigate to the root folder of the project. Note, if following from the Build instructions, a command prompt should already be available at the root folder of the project. Enter the following commands to run the tests:
C:\> ctest -C "Debug"Start the Terminal.app. Note, if following from the Build instructions, the Terminal.app has already been started and the present working directory (pwd) should already be the root folder of the project. Enter the following commands to run the tests:
ctestOr,
make testStart a terminal. Note, if following from the Build instructions, the terminal has already been started and the present working directory (pwd) should already be the root folder of the project. Enter the following commands to run the tests:
ctestOr,
make testThe libssh2lv project is licensed under the BSD-3-Clause license. The libssh2lv project statically compiles code from the libssh2 and OpenSSL projects, which are licensed under the MIT license and Apache-2.0 license, respectively. See the LICENSE file for more information about licensing and copyright.