C++ Bindings for Linux

Runtime-agnostic Linux shared library for serial communication. It implements the cpp-core interface and provides functions for discovering, opening, configuring, reading from, and writing to serial ports.

The library exposes a C-compatible ABI and can be used from any language or runtime that can load a GNU/Linux shared library and call C functions. Release artifacts include machine-readable FFI metadata for generating runtime-specific adapters, including exported symbols, types, callbacks, structs, defaults, and API documentation.

Requirements

• Linux
• Git
• CMake 3.30 or newer
• Ninja
• A compiler with sufficient C++26 support

CMake downloads cpp-core and GoogleTest automatically during configuration.

Build

git clone https://github.com/Serial-IO/cpp-bindings-linux.git
cd cpp-bindings-linux
cmake --preset linux-gcc-release
cmake --build --preset linux-gcc-release --target cpp_bindings_linux

The shared library is written to build/libcpp_bindings_linux.so.

Official release and JSR artifacts are built for these GNU/Linux targets:

Target	CPU baseline	Minimum glibc
x86_64-linux-gnu	generic x86-64	2.28
aarch64-linux-gnu	ARMv8-A	2.28

Binary compatibility

The prebuilt binaries require glibc 2.28 or newer. Compatibility depends on the installed glibc version rather than the distribution name. Common release baselines are shown below for orientation:

Distribution	Release baseline
Debian	10+
Ubuntu	20.04 LTS+
RHEL / Rocky Linux / AlmaLinux	8+
Fedora	29+
openSUSE Leap	15.x (not compatible by default)

Check the installed version with:

ldd --version

These versions indicate binary compatibility and do not imply that the listed distribution releases are still supported by their vendors.

Portable release builds

The release builds statically include the GNU C++ and compiler runtimes. They still use the target system's glibc and therefore require glibc 2.28 or newer. To reproduce the portable release configuration for the host architecture:

cmake -S . -B build -G Ninja \
  -DCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=Release \
  -DCPP_BINDINGS_LINUX_PORTABLE_CPU_BASELINE=ON \
  -DCPP_BINDINGS_LINUX_STATIC_CXX_RUNTIME=ON
cmake --build build --target cpp_bindings_linux

The CI release builds use pinned manylinux_2_28 images with GCC 14. GCC 16 is used separately to generate the ASTrein FFI metadata.

To select a specific compiler, add it while configuring, for example:

cmake --preset linux-gcc-release \
  -DCMAKE_C_COMPILER=gcc-14 \
  -DCMAKE_CXX_COMPILER=g++-14

Tests

Build and run the C++ test suite:

cmake --build --preset linux-gcc-release --target cpp_bindings_linux_tests
ctest --test-dir build --output-on-failure

Tests that require a serial device use SERIAL_TEST_PORT. They are skipped when no suitable device is available.

The optional runtime integration smoke tests currently use Deno 2 as their FFI test harness and require a built library. Deno is not required to consume the library from another compatible runtime:

cd integration_tests
deno task test

License

This project is licensed under the GNU Lesser General Public License v3.0.