Socklab

Socklab is an interactive tool to learn about the socket API for UDP and TCP, without having to actually write C code. The original description in French was "laboratoire d'étude des sockets Internet".

It allows to create UDP and TCP sockets, bind() and connect() them, read(), write() to them, etc. All this is provided by a shell-like interface with auto-completion.

Socklab is known to work fine on Linux, FreeBSD and OS X. It has been used extensively to teach networking courses over the last 30 years:

• Université Grenoble Alpes / Grenoble INP / Polytech Grenoble
• Université Savoie Mont Blanc / IUT Annecy
• Université de La Rochelle
• Université Lille 1 / Faculté des Sciences et Technologies / MIAGE
• Université de Caen Normandie / IUT Caen
• Université de la Réunion

Using socklab

You can run socklab in either UDP mode, TCP mode, or an advanced "standard" mode that allows to use both UDP and TCP:

$ socklab udp
$ socklab tcp
$ socklab

Once socklab is started (whatever the mode), run help to get a list of available commands.

Documentation

There are several sources of documentation:

• basic help: available within socklab itself by running help
• description of commands: man page socklab(1)
• most complete documentation: the LaTeX documentation in doc/ (in French)

Building

The only dependency necessary to build socklab is readline. You should install the libreadline-dev package on Debian-based systems.

Socklab uses a simple Makefile, so it should be enough to do:

$ make

On BSD, make sure to use gmake:

$ gmake

For packagers, the install target of the Makefile supports the standard GNU variables (prefix, DESTDIR, etc).

The code is formatted with GNU indent, using a style similar to the Linux kernel. The following GNU indent options are used:

-nbad -bap -nbc -bbo -hnl -br -brs -c33 -cd33 -ncdb -ce -ci4 
-cli0 -d0 -di1 -nfc1 -i4 -ip0 -l150 -lp -npcs -nprs -npsl -sai
-saf -saw -ncs -nsc -sob -nfca -cp33 -ss -nut -il1

License

Socklab uses the CeCILL V2 license, see Licence_CeCILL_V2-en.txt.

Sous Licence CeCILL V2, voir le fichier Licence_CeCILL_V2-fr.txt.

How to make a new release

• determine the new version number using semantic versioning
• update VERSION in the Makefile
• create a new entry in the CHANGELOG file
• commit in git
• create tag: git tag v1.x.y
• push everything with git push && git push --tags
• create a release on github and copy-paste the changelog entry

Contributors

Developped initially by L. Croq, L. Sali, P. Sicard.

Successive contributions L. Bellissard, M. Heusse, F. Rousseau, B. Jonglez, and others.