Paths starting with "/" will be stripped of the leading slash now. Empty paths (or a single slash) will be interpreted to refer to the Module itself and hence return *this.

This logic is otherwise ofter required in code which uses submodule().

Before it had to be stripped for all use cases anyway, so it is better to leave it out from the beginning.

Prints a clear message if a circular dependency of initial values exists.

- Initial values are sometimetimes only propagated in the first run of the main loops, not in prepare. If other modules are waiting for it they cannot enter their main loop. That's why all threads have to be started first, and only the it is waited for all of them to enter testable mode.

Throws logic_error if these modifiers are used in the top level

This can be overridden by a newly introduced boolean argument. Including the return channel was causing problems e.g. when propagating the DataValidity flag.

Implemented first part of #17: A HierarchyModifier can now be specified instead of the eliminateHierarchy boolean flag. No new functionality is yet added.

Added preliminary support for bidirectional variables. There are still some known issues, e.g. concurrent updates can still lead to race conditions. This will be addressed soon.

Updated to use the new ReadAnyGroup instead of the old readAny function. Some tests are still hanging or failing (mostly due to shutdown issues)

Proper implementation of move constructors and move assignment operators for all module types (including tests for the assignment operator)

Fixed a bug that sometimes variables were read (resp. written) in groups despite they were outputs (resp. inputs). This was happening with device variables since they are bi-directional. Now no longer the information from the accessor is used whether this variable is readable or writeable, but the information from the VariableNetworkNode which direction this variable should have.

fixed connectTo() so it now uses the dynamic/virtual model and thus obeys e.g. eliminated hierarchies etc.

Make Module::connectTo() no longer a template, since a virtual function can anyway not be overridden with a different return type... (c.f. the comment in the deleted code)

obey the eliminate hierarchy flag when using the () and [] operators of modules (and thus also when using connectTo())

made Module::connectTo() compile-time polymorphic, to allow special modules with operator() returning a different type.

Changed Module::readAll() to read all push-type variables first, to make sure that poll-type variables are up-to-date upon return

moved group read/write and []/() oprerators from the VariableGroup class into the Module class, to make the functionality also available in ApplicationModules

Changed Module::connectTo() to accept also temporary module objects, e.g. as returned by findTag(). As a consequence, the operators [] and () of the modules had to be changed to const.