serial interface

[Paolo Redælli]

In a recent mail exchange with Hans we agreed on the need to provide 
some functionalities to make Liberty Eiffel more interesting.

One of the features he longed for is a serial interface library. Some of 
you may think that "serial communication" is a thing of the past while 
those who work in industrial automation knows that it is a basic 
functionality to physically interface with PLCs and the like.

Knowing his need for serial communication hurted me because some years 
ago I was almost going to build such a library for a small project of 
mine at work. I ended up using Python.... 🙁

Now it's the time I fix this.

The question is how to approach this issue.

Shall I wrap an existing library? In that case which one?

Shall I port some other library or "take inspiration" from existing code?

I've been using almost exclusively Linux since 1998 with minimal 
exposure to Windows so I gladly welcome any suggestion from developers 
who mainly use Win.