Help For Compiling On Linux

This document describes how to interface with the SpinAPI control library, which is used to control all SpinCore products, including PulseBlaster, PulseBlasterDDS, PulseBlasterESR, PulseBlasterESR-PRO, and RadioProcessor.

Linux Compilation

SpinAPI can be used with Linux on x86 processors. To get your programs running on Linux:

1. Download the SpinAPI archive for Linux from http://www.spincore.com/CD/Setup/linux/SpinAPI_linux.tar and extract it under your home directory.


2. Install libusb v0.1. The source package is available here. Under Debian based systems (including Ubuntu) the library can be installed with the following command:
   
   apt-get install libusb-dev
   


3. In the spinapi_source/ directory, type "make". You may need superuser privilege to run make. This will create a file called libspinapi.a which you can link your programs against to use SpinCore hardware. Make sure if the spinapi.h is copied under /usr/include/ to compile correctly.


4. To compile your program, you must link with both the spinapi and math libraries. For example, when compiling the "pb24_ex1.c" example program, you would use a command like (assuming both libspinapi.a and pb24_ex1.c are in the current directory):
   
   $gcc -opb24_ex1 pb24_ex1.c -L. -lspinapi -lm -lusb
   
   This will create an executable called "pb24_ex1".


5. When running programs, you MUST have superuser privileges (ie be running as root). This is because the SpinAPI library needs to be able to gain access to the low-level hardware resources.