The SMA information eXchange (SMA-X) is a high performance and versatile data sharing platform for distributed software systems. It is built around a central Redis database, and provides atomic access to structured data, including specific branches and/or leaf nodes, with associated metadadata. The lead architect of SMA-X is Attila Kovács at the Center for Astrophysics | Harvard & Sigmyne.
The smax-clib C/C++ client library was created, and is maintained, by Attila Kovács at the Center for Astrophysics | Harvard & Sigmyne, and it is available through the Sigmyne/redisx repository on GitHub.
If you use SMA-X for your project, please cite as:
- Kovács, Attila, Grimes, Paul K., Moriarty, Christopher, and Wilson, Robert, Journal of Astronomical Telescopes, Instruments, and Systems, Volume 11, id. 017001 (2025). (DOI: 10.1117/1.JATIS.11.1.017001).
This site contains various online resources that support the library:
Documentation
- User’s guide (
README.md) - API Documentation
- History of changes (
CHANGELOG.md) - Issues affecting smax-clib releases (past and/or present)
- Community Forum – ask a question, provide feedback, or check announcements.
Dependencies
- Sigmyne/xchange – structured data exchange framework
- Sigmyne/redisx – A C/C++ Redis client library
- Smithsonian/smax-server – SMA-X server configuration kit
Downloads
- Releases from GitHub
vcpkg Registry
You can also install the smax-clib library with vcpkg on Linux, MacOS, Windows, and Android as:
$ vcpkg install smax-clib
Or, with the optional tls components (for TLS encryption support) as:
$ vcpkg install smax-clib[core,tls]
Homebrew
Or, install via the Homebrew package manager (MacOS and Linux) through the maintainer’s own Tap:
$ brew tap attipaci/pub
$ brew install smax-clib
For more customized installations, you can add the following options also:
| Option | Description |
|---|---|
--without-openssl |
Build without TLS support. |
--with-doxygen |
Install with local HTML documentation. |