[question] Maybe you consider joining forces with Apache PLC4X?

[splatch]

I am throwing this as an issue since I have no contact to you and would like to see opinion of others. Apache PLC4X has support for Ethernet/IP which was done a while ago. Primary maintainer who did it is currently inactive. Given that I noticed some new patches on your end I wanted to check with you whether you would be interested to see cooperation with bigger project. For clarity - I did not audit your library to deeply - I saw it is categorized under ethernet-ip and have bunch of stars.

Apache PLC4X offers unified API to access industrial equipment. Currently it does support S7 (Siemens)/ADS (Beckhoff)/Modbus/CANopen/OPC UA (currently through Eclipse Milo but on the way to be swapped) and couple more. For developer API is same for each of above standards.

On benefit side for you, what PLC4X can offer to you:

• Generation of serialization and deserialization logic based on described messages: https://github.com/apache/plc4x/blob/develop/protocols/eip/src/main/resources/protocols/eip/eip.mspec - you don't have to manage buffers manually. One of folks wrote complete S7 protocol simulator based on generated structures.
• Serialization testing framework: https://github.com/apache/plc4x/blob/develop/protocols/eip/src/test/resources/protocols/eip/ParserSerializerTestsuite.xml - you can test binary payloads and their decoding.
• Protocol testing framework: https://github.com/apache/plc4x/blob/develop/protocols/eip/src/test/resources/protocols/eip/DriverTestsuite.xml - you can do integration testing of chained or segmented invocations.

Regardless of your answer we welcome your opinion! Team is mix of EU and US people who are loosely coupled. There is no direct association with any major hardware manufacturer. Code is licensed under Apache License v2 (a bit more liberal than EPL you use). Community health is supervised by Apache Software Foundation.

[kasemir]

Good to know that there is wider interest in PLC connectivity from Java, and the apache project looks useful.

As mentioned in the readme, this project started as a Java re-implementation of a C library. Turns out that C library has been and is continued to be used in production. For the Java re-implementation, it looks like some people found it online, put it to use, contributed changes, but at my workplace the C version is still predominant.
I have thus no spare cycles to significantly update the Java version, let alone incorporate it into a larger project.

I'll leave this open so people who stumble over this repo will be aware of the apache effort.