Native-platform: Java bindings for various native APIs

A collection of cross-platform Java APIs for various native APIs. Supports OS X, Linux, Solaris and Windows.

These APIs support Java 5 and later. Some of these APIs overlap with APIs available in later Java versions.

Available bindings

Generic

• Get and set UNIX file mode.
• Get PID of current process.
• Get kernel name and version.
• Get machine architecture.

Terminal and console

These bindings work for both the UNIX terminal and Windows console:

• Determine if stdout/stderr are attached to a terminal.
• Query the terminal size.
• Switch between bold and normal mode on the terminal.
• Change foreground color on the terminal.
• Move terminal cursor up, down, left, right, start of line.
• Clear to end of line.

File systems

• List the available file systems on the machine
• Query file system mount point.
• Query file system type.
• Query file system device name.
• Query whether a file system is local or remote.

Supported platforms

Currently ported to OS X, Linux, Solaris and Windows. Tested on:

• OS X 10.7.4, 10.8 (i386 and x86_64)
• Ubunutu 12.04 (amd64)
• Solaris 11 (x86)
• Windows 7 (amd64)

Using

Include native-platform.jar and native-platform-jni.jar in your classpath.

import net.rubygrapefruit.platform.Native;
import net.rubygrapefruit.platform.TerminalAccess;
import static net.rubygrapefruit.platform.TerminalAccess.Output.*;

TerminalAccess terminalAccess = Native.get(TerminalAccess.class);

// check if terminal
terminalAccess.isTerminal(Stdout);

// use terminal
terminalAccess.getTerminal(Stdout).bold();
System.out.println("bold text");

Building

You will need a very recent snapshot of Gradle.

Ubuntu

The g++ compiler is required to build the native library. You will need to g++ package for this. Generally this is already installed.

You need to install the libncurses5-dev package to pick up the ncurses header files. Also worth installing the ncurses-doc package too.

Windows

You need to install Visual studio, and build from a Visual studio command prompt.

OS X

The g++ compiler is required to build the native library. You will need to install the XCode tools for this.

Solaris

For Solaris 11, you need to install the development/gcc-45 and system/header packages.

Running

Run gradle install to install into build/install/native-platform. Or gradle distZip to create an application distribtion in build/distributions/native-platform.zip.

You can run $INSTALL_DIR/bin/native-platform to run the test application.

TODO

Fixes

• Build 32 bit and 64 bit libraries.
• Windows: flush System.out or System.err on attribute change.
• Solaris: fix unicode file name handling.
• Linux: detect remote filesystems.

Improvements

• Handle multiple platforms in self-extracting jar.
• Support for cygwin terminal
• Use TERM=xtermc instead of TERM=xterm on Solaris.
• Add diagnostics for terminal.
• Split out separate native library for terminal handling.
• Version each native interface separately.
• String names for errno values.
• Split into multiple projects.
• Test on IBM JVM.
• Convert to c.
• Thread safety.
• Improve error message when unsupported capability is used.
• Initial release.
• Use fully decomposed form for unicode file names on hfs+ filesystems.