Replace RxTx with jSerialComm

[amitjoy]

It would be really nice to use jSerialComm [1] instead of RxTx.

[1] - https://github.com/Fazecast/jSerialComm

[whizzosoftware]

Any particular reason for the suggestion? I did a quick Google search and didn't see any immediately obvious benefits.

[amitjoy]

RxTx requires users to setup their environment to have RxTx system libraries whereas jSerialComm is a platform-independent way to access standard serial ports. Many projects such as j2mod, jamod are currently using jSerialComm for such platform independent access to serial ports.

[whizzosoftware]

This can be done with RxTx as well. Take a look at this project:

https://github.com/whizzosoftware/rxtx-osgi

It's what I'm using for my Hobson IoT platform and doesn't require the user to install anything specific to RxTx. The native libraries are discovered and run from the JAR file same as jSerialComm.

[amitjoy]

I actually didn't know that there already exists an OSGi-fied version of RxTX. I would give it a try. Many thanks for the information though. 👍

[whizzosoftware]

No problem, let me know what you find. I would assume that the JAR structure of the native libraries can carry over to non-OSGi projects verbatim. I've tested it successfully with Windows, Mac and Linux including Debian on both Raspberry Pi 2/3 and Beaglebone Black.

[anton-johansson]

I found this issue and I was going to open up an issue about this here. Then I found this issue!

Seeing as netty is deprecating it (in 4.1.x already), for good reasons too, maybe it's not a bad idea to look for a replacement?

[whizzosoftware]

Thanks for pointing that out. If the Netty team is dropping support for RxTx then it would make sense to move to jSerialComm.

[Ziver]

I've actually been working on a pr for using jSerialComm in WZWave.

I wrote a jSerialComm transport for netty that's available here: https://github.com/Ziver/Netty-Transport-jSerialComm

[anton-johansson]

@Ziver: Cool! For the curious one, is there any place where you can track the progress? I couldn't find a branch for it in your fork.

[Ziver]

Yeah, my WZWave fork is kind of a mess. I'll see if I can clean it up a bit today.

[Ziver]

Here is the cleaned up branch: https://github.com/Ziver/WZWave/tree/jserialcomm

I "think" it is working but I only have a Z-Stick Gen5 so don't really have a functioning environment to test it in, would be good if someone could verify that it actually works before I create a PR.

[anton-johansson]

Nice, looks good!

As @whizzosoftware mentioned in another issue, the code base is easily unit tested (and seems pretty well unit tested already as well). We should add unit tests that verify various devices, to make the transition to jserialcomm easier.

I can also build your code locally just to verify that it works the same for me, but I need to progress with my application a bit more first.

[anton-johansson]

@Ziver, could you rebase your branch with the latest changes and maybe create a pull request for this? I could then try it out with my devices. I only have a couple though, so it'd be nice if @whizzosoftware could try it too. :)

[Ziver]

I've created a PR for it now.