I tried to portray a dummy with a hostmot substitution, but I'm not a developer and it's extremely difficult and incomprehensible for me. perhaps it would be a great thing if in ini or hal there would be something like: mode = simulation / work with the board. and if there is a simulation, then the config was launched with any board. at the level of setting up a config or editing it remotely, this would be effective for debugging or developing a configuration. do you know about john the time killer serial programmer?
I just thinking in similar approach.
in ini/hal files there are markers (comments) like:
;WORK
#net x-pos-fb <= hm2_7i92.0.encoder.00.position
#net x-vel-fb <= hm2_7i92.0.encoder.00.velocity
;
END of WORK
;SIM
net x-pos-fb <= mySimComponent.position
net x-vel-fb <= mySimComponent.velocity
;
END of SIM
Before linuxcnc is started the simple script is started which make comments in apropriate blocks. Maybe checking hostname to know if it's in real machine and set comments to ;SIM block or if hostname is not machine name then make comments to ;WORK block.
And of course to make component in hal or userspace to simulate the machine itself (up to degree wanted)
