EPICS Base 3'14 Status DIAMOND June 2003

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EPICS Base 3.14 StatusDIAMOND June 2003

• Marty Kraimer
• APS/ANL

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EPICS Base 3.14 Status

• 3.14.2 is the latest release
• Sequencer and gpibCore available for 3.14.2.
  gpib from APS, sequencer from SLAC
• Build rules changed between 3.14.1 and 3.14.2
• Simplified
• Everything by default uses shared libraries
• Future 3.14 releases
• Major emphasis is stability
• Only minor enhancements
• Major changes will go into 3.15
• 3.14 releases will be bug fix releases
• 3.14 has been put on CVS branch

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Base 3.14 Overview

• Main Goal for 3.14 port iocCore
• vxWorks - 5.4 (Tornado 2) required
• RTEMS - Open Source Real Time Operating System
• Solaris
• Linux
• Win32 - NT, win2000 tested
• Darwin - Open Source for Mac OSX
• HPUX-11
• Base software is organized to minimize porting
  effort
• Marty Kraimer, Jeff Hill, Janet Anderson, Eric
  Norum, and Ralph Lange primary developers.
• Hardware Support
• vxWorks support unbundled
• RTEMS at both CLS and SSRL
• Requires major changes for non VME/vxWorks
  platforms

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3.14 Channel Access Features

• Large Arrays
• Both client and server must be 3.14
• Set CA_MAX_ARRAY_BYTES on both client and server
• Transparent to existing clients
• Purpose is ease of use not performance
• PCAS also supports large arrays.
• Multipriority CA servers - available in beta1
• Client must request, i.e. not transparent to
  existing clients.
• Provides incremential improvement for performance
  degradatation. Purpose is to allow inter IOC
  communication to have higher priority than other
  clients.
• No other new features for 3.14
• CA reference manual available via 3.14.2 WWW page

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Binding to IOC components

• Base now build as shared or static libraries
• But recSup/devSup/etc located at run time
• How to get from library?
• Four dbd statement refer to code
• Recordtype, device, driver, registrar
• Perl script reads ltappgtInclude.dbd and
  generatesltappgt_registerRecordDeviceDriver.cpp
• This generated file causes the desired support to
  load
• Code must use one of the following
• epicsExportAddress(lttypegt,ltobjectgt)
• epicsExportRegistrar(ltfuncgt)

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Binding Continued

• epicsExportAddress
• epicsExportAddress(rset,xxxRSET)
• epicsExportAddress(dset,DSETxxx)
• epicsExportAddress(drvet,drvXXX)
• epicsExportRegistrar(xxx)
• xxx must bevoid xxx(void)
• xxx normally calls various registry routines
• Xxx will be called via registerRecordDeviceDriver
  Should be registerRecordDeviceDriverRegistrar
  -)
• dbSubExample.c gives an example for subRecord

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Big Item for 3.14.3

• Increase the reliability of the PV Gateway
• Status of latest version of PVGateway PCAS CA
• On heavily loaded Gateway at APS
• The CPU usage of the latest version is 1/7th of
  the 3.13 version
• Still crashes occasionally
• One failure results in gateway not responding but
  does not automatically get restarted
• Jeff Hill and Ken Evans are working on known
  problems
• I believe that 3.14 is now more reliable than
  3.13
• APS has great interest in VERY reliable PV
  Gateway and Nameserver.