Library Categories

Using Library Categories in the Library Repository, besides sorting according to the Company Name allows to structure the huge set of libraries. The library categories are an important tool to make it easier for the user to find the desired library quickly and it is also a tool to show the relationship between libraries. All libraries within one category are related to each other. Categories can be used by CODESYS itself to provide user friendly features for handling libraries. Here are the main categories defined for CODESYS libraries:

Application:	Libraries of this category are target independent and are explicitly to be inserted in a project by the user. They are implemented matching the coding rules for CODESYS libraries and are sorted in subcategory Application|xyz. For example: Every End User Library is a member of this category.
Intern:	Libraries of this category normally are referenced by other libraries or automatically get inserted in a CODESYS project by certain plug-in extensions. In normal case these libraries should not be inserted or removed by the end user. They are sorted in subcategory Intern|xyz. For example: The CANopen Stack implementing library is part of this category.
System:	Libraries of this category directly depend on the runtime system or implement parts of the runtime system. Usually they should not be directly inserted in the CODESYS project, but are referenced by other libraries. The direct use of these libraries by the end user often represents a security risk! They are sorted in subcategory System|xyz. This kind of library has a library name starting with Cmp or Sys. For example: The SysSem library is an abstraction layer of the operating system specific semaphore handling.

At any time you can create further subcategories. After that these can be referenced in the Project Information of a library. All the library categories are defined in a xml-file. An appropriate template (LibraryCategoryBase.libcat.xml) is provided with each CODESYS setup.