Hi there,
several years ago I wrote an instrument control package for a set of specialized lab equipment controlled from a Linux PC via GPIB (NI PCI card). The need to frequently update the kernel driver turned out to be an issue for the daily work, so we switched over to a GPIB-ENET/100, which at that time came with a lightweight 32bit interface library libgpibenet.so with very little system dependency - so it was portable between different linux systems.
Recently, I was trying to upgrade the package to a more recent 64-bit linux variant, using up-to-date drivers from NI. Unfortunately, the current offering requires me to install some 30 rpm packages including kernel drivers (causing extra problems when the kernel requires signed modules). My GPIB application now crashes in nipalau.so if kernel modules are missing - which I don't need anyway! - or some startup scripts have not been executed. Even worse: the latest packages have sadly dropped support for the GPIB-ENET/100, probably due to too much maintenance overhead, and the GPIB-ENET/1000 is now the only available package that does not required kernel support.
However, purchasing a GPIB-ENET/1000 as an upgrade is no option if I cannot get rid of the runtime-dependencies on unneeded software.
Currently, my only choices are using an outdated linux system with the full package NI package version 2017, or an even older system with the original 32bit driver library.
Question: would it be possible to provide a 64bit-variant of the original GPIB-ENET Linux package to gain full advantage of the very low system requirements? I could even live without the fancy graphical configuration tools...
