LIRC - Linux Infrared Remote Control README.

Copyright (C) 1996 Ralph Metzler <rjkm@thp.uni-koeln.de>
Copyright (C) 1998-2010 Christoph Bartelmus <lirc@bartelmus.de>
Copyright (C) 2010-2011 Jarod Wilson <jarod@redhat.com>
(according to GNU General Public Licence 2.0 or later)

General

This is the README file for LIRC, the Linux Infrared Remote Control package. The main documentation of this package is available in HTML format:

• For last released version at http://lirc.org.
• For current developent version (nightly builds) at http://lirc.sourceforge.net/lirc.org.
• After building the documentation is also available at doc/html/index.html.

Updated versions of lirc is available using the website http://lirc.org.

Last version: 0.9.4

Build and install.

More complete build and install instructions are available in the manual, the Installation chapter. The fast track:

$ ./configure
$ make
$ sudo make install

Building the Debian package.

As of 0.9.4 the distribution contains a Debian source package. At the time of writing it builds on debian-jessie, debian-stretch, ubuntu-trusty and ubuntu-xenial.

Detailed instructions how to build .deb packages from the source package are in README.md which is shipped with the debian sources.

Upgrading

If you are upgrading from an older version of LIRC take a look at the NEWS file which contains all user visible changes between releases. From the top:

0.9.4 23/5/16

• Issues: https://sf.net/p/lirc/tickets/milestone/0.9.4

• Digest of 0.9.4pre1, 0.9.4pre2

• The caraca driver has been retired (still available in attic/).

• The iguanair driver has been moved out of tree and is now maintained by Iguanaworks, Inc. See drivers/iguanair/README.
• The irman driver has been moved out of tree. From 0.5.1 the libirman package contains the driver. See drivers/irman/README
• The yard2 driver has been moved out of tree and is now maintained by the yard2 project. See driver/yard2/README.
• The lirc.4 manpage (/dev/lirc* interface) is upstreamed to the linux kernel manpages project (#164). Old page lirc.4l still lingers in attic/ but is not installed.

• Upstream selinux updated to match current lircd requirements. See: https://github.com/fedora-selinux/selinux-policy/pull/41

• New upstream debian packaging with which Debian users can create .deb packages. Ubuntu packages are also available in PPAs. See README.md in the debian branch (#137).

• New driver girs for the GIRS protocol, gives LIRC Arduino support. See new info in driver documentation.
• New transmit-only FTDI driver with enhanced accuracy and hardware support. See ftdix driver documentation.
• Support for non-modulated signals added (#132).
• As shipped, lircd now uses the devinput driver and the new 'auto' device, should work for all remotes supported by kernel (#106).
• Enhanced lirc-setup tool (#123, partly):
  • Add drvctl device enumeration support.
  • Integrated mode2 and irw tests of current configuration.
  • Documentation links.
  • More consistent data based on new database.
  • Multiple bugfixes.
• Several patches to make mode2 work with all drivers(#123, partly)
• Configuration database overhaul (#123, partly)
  • Database lives as yaml files in configs/.
  • Data is collected from drivers, remotes and static files.
  • Better ways for drivers to enumerate devices.
  • There is an unstable python database module used by all tools.
• Several drivers including default and devinput has enhanced enumeration support, usable with mode2 -l and lirc-setup.
• devinput.lircd.conf is generated at build time to match host kernel, new script lirc-make-devinput shipped to re-generate it (#153)
• A new script lircd-setup runs as a one-shot service before lircd, performing setup commands as root (#121).
• Several new examples in contrib/, notably lircrc templates for many popular LIRC applications and improved udev rules.
• The default driver does not require root perms if the protocol is correct (#133).
• Add an "auto" device to devinput driver for single-device usecase (#134).
• irrecord has been taught to handle remotes without gap (#98).
• The --uinput lircd option is deprecated, obsoleted by the lircd.uinput.service systemd service. See lircd-uinput(8).

• CLI options for mode2, xmode2 and irrecord has been streamlined. All tools falls back to lircd defaults where it makes sense.

• The driver API has been expanded with functions to enumerate devices. See configs/README and lib/driver.h.

• New logging API with hooks for enhanced messages and filtering (also #129).

• The out-of-tree build interface is enhanced with hooks for external drivers to rebuild documentation and add a config file.

• lircd: Fix too-short gap when sending/blasting (#158).

• lircd: Fix typo causing lost deinit_func() calls (#179).
• irrecord fixes:
  • Fix broken namespace checks on recent kernels (#187).
  • Buggy handling of not decoded buttons in irrecord (#146).
  • Repeated buttons problems (#149)
  • Endless loop when key is not recognized (#146)
  • Endless loop on idendifying toggle mark (#139)
• lirs-lsremotes: Don't use non-standard GLOB_BRACE (#174).
• lib: Fix misleading logprintf comments (#179)
• lib: Clean up loglevel handling (#178).
• Fix --plugindir not being respected (#144).
• Fix gid and supplementary groups in CLI apps dropping root.
• Fix a crash in irrecord when invoked without options.
• Fix bad parsing of --options-file unless given first (#165).
• plugins/default: Don't require write access if not needed (#133).
• plugins/atilibusb: Fix crash for non-existing device (#145).
• plugins/audio_alsa : Fix blocking regression bug (#169).
• plugins/file: Fix bad test for LIRCCODE cases (#171).
• plugins/ftdi: Bugfixes: 4157fe1, 92e2d1d, #182.
• plugins/girs: Bugfixes.
• plugins/default: Remotes become too sensitive in 0.9.3 (#148)

• plugins/default: Walk around kernel bug generating multiple spaces (#172).

• doc: lircd.conf: Document suppress_repeat parameter.

• Clean up docs, remove circular links (#136). Documentation is now only in lirc.org/html.
• build: Add explicit default -L${libdir} linker flag.
• build: Fix Debian FTBS compilation error.