![]() In this tutorial we will discuss what a terminal is, which terminal programs are best suited for certain situations and operating systems, and how to configure and use each program. There are lots of different terminal programs out there, and they all have their pros and cons. Once you have learned the ins and outs of a terminal application, it can be a very powerful tool in your electronics and programming arsenal. They allow you to see data sent to and from your microcontroller, and that data can be used for a number of reasons including troubleshooting/debugging, communication testing, calibrating sensors, configuring modules, and data monitoring. In short, serial terminal programs make working with microcontrollers that much simpler. This tutorial is here to help you understand what these terms mean and how they form the larger picture that is serial communication over a terminal. For someone who isn't familiar with these terms and the context in which they are used, they can be confusing at times. These are all words that get thrown around a lot when working with electronics, especially microcontrollers. To notarise the compiled program, you need to use Xcode’s own command line tools - and you can find full details about the process in my post here.COM ports. Incidentally, you can access the ist data via the Bundle class in the code you write to display the program’s version number: let version = (forInfoDictionaryKey: "CFBundleShortVersionString") as! String With the ist data compiled into your binary, you can get it notarised. ![]() This will add an ist file to your project, which you can edit in the usual Xcode way. You’ll see a Create ist Section in Binary option - make sure this is set to Yes. Go to the Xcode target’s Build Settings and scrolling to Packaging section (or entering ist in the search field). But a command line tool isn’t a bundle, so where do you put its ist file? Notarisation relies on the Mac standard app identification system: the presence of an ist file within the app bundle. Getting GUI applications notarised is easy with Xcode, but it’s a little trickier for command line tools. I use Apple’s software notarisation system to provide users with a degree of trust that my apps are safe to use. Alternatively, you might recast your existing code as a class, which your command line tool instantiates and then calls methods to process the input and generate the results. Your code may be based on classes and that means integration with XCTest is straightforward. It works very well with object-oriented code, but less well with code that isn’t based on classes - like my command line tools. ![]() For GUI programs, I use Xcode’s own XCTest framework. I’ve been testing command-line programs with a series of test cases written within a shell script I created for the purpose. These are usually triggered when the user hits ctrl– c to cancel an unwanted operation. Update For more up-to-date info on trapping signals like ctrl-c/ SIGINT, check out this post: Tackle async signal safety in Swift.įirst, I set up a trap to catch attempts to interrupt the program. I’ll come back to code organisation when I talk about testing, but for now let’s just run through some key command-line tool components. There’s no main() function - your Swift code just runs from the top. Xcode provides a single file, main.swift, for all this, though you can break elements out into other files as you wish. You will have your own preference for the way your code is organised, but I follow a basic structure of constants, globals, functions and then the code that is executed when the program is launched. Xcode makes command line tool creation straightforward
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