libmnl Documentation

1.0.1

libmnl is a minimalistic user-space library oriented to Netlink developers. There are a lot of common tasks in parsing, validating, constructing of both the Netlink header and TLVs that are repetitive and easy to get wrong. This library aims to provide simple helpers that allows you to avoid re-inventing the wheel in common Netlink tasks.

"Simplify, simplify" -- Henry David Thoureau. Walden (1854)

The acronym libmnl stands for LIBrary Minimalistic NetLink.

libmnl homepage is: http://www.netfilter.org/projects/libmnl/

Main Features

• Small: the shared library requires around 30KB for an x86-based computer.
• Simple: this library avoids complex abstractions that tend to hide Netlink details. It avoids elaborated object-oriented infrastructure and complex callback-based workflow.
• Easy to use: the library simplifies the work for Netlink-wise developers. It provides functions to make socket handling, message building, validating, parsing and sequence tracking, easier.
• Easy to re-use: you can use this library to build your own abstraction layer upon this library, if you want to provide another library that hides Netlink details to your users.
• Decoupling: the interdependency of the main bricks that compose this library is reduced, i.e. the library provides many helpers, but the programmer is not forced to use them.

Licensing terms

This library is released under the LGPLv2.1 or any later (at your option).

Dependencies

You have to install the Linux kernel headers that you want to use to develop your application. Moreover, this library requires that you have some basics on Netlink.

Git Tree

The current development version of libmnl can be accessed at: http://git.netfilter.org/cgi-bin/gitweb.cgi?p=libmnl.git;a=summary

Using libmnl

You can access several example files under examples/ in the libmnl source code tree.