RTEMS release 4.9 or newer is required. If you are using the RTEMS NFS time provider you need to use RTEMS 4.9.1 or newer.
Correctly return epicsEventWaitTimeout when event is not pending and timeout value is 0.0 secondsmore agressive.
Fixed a race condition exposed by compilers with more agressive optimization.
The camonitor program now supports the ability to display both server- and client-side timestamps, simultaneously if requested. The old command-line options -r -i and -I that controlled the timestamp display have been replaced with a new -t option that takes additional argument letters to control which timestamp sources and output format should be used.
See the Command Line Tools section of the Channel Access reference manual or run camonitor -h for a summary of the options.
A new device support has been added that allows a stringout record to output one-line messages to stdout, stderr or the errlog subsystem. Use DTYP="stdio" and set the OUT field to one of "@stdout", "@stderr" or "@errlog" to control the message destination. A newline is appended to the contents of the record's VAL field when printing.
The way in which EPICS gets the time has been significantly revised since R3.14.9 with the introduction of the General Time subsystem. Two kinds of pluggable time providers are now supported, which return either the current time or the latest timestamp of a numbered Time Event from a hardware event system. All IOCs must have at least one Current Time provider, but Event Time providers are optional. The General Time subsystem guarantees that the timestamps returned never step backwards, even when switching between time providers.
A Current Time Provider reports the current wall-clock time if it is able to when asked; if it can't it says so, and the time subsystem will then ask the next provider in its list and so on until someone replies with the time. Event Time providers are handled similarly, except that they are asked for the timestamp associated with a particular Time Event number rather than the current wall-clock time. The registered time providers can be listed using the IOC command generalTimeReport(int interest) and some time providers also have their own separate report commands.
Different target architectures come with different default Current Time providers in Base. The Unix-like architectures rely on the underlying operating system clock, which normally involves running something like ntpd as a separate process. The real-time operating systems vxWorks and RTEMS install two Current Time providers; the native operating system clock at the lowest priority (this provider includes a task to periodically reset the operating system clock from a higher priority time provider), and an NTP time provider which synchronizes the underlying operating sytem tick timer with an NTP server. Microsoft Windows targets using the Win32 API use a Windows-specific time provider which contains a built-in PLL.
There are no Event Time providers included with Base except for an optional "Last Resort" Event provider which can be installed if a site wants to be sure that every Time Event number will have a recent timestamp associated with it even if the hardware event system goes down. The Last Resort Event Time provider returns the current time for every Time Event number. To install this provider, run the command installLastResortEventProvider from your IOC startup script.
Additional information about General Time and the time providers included with Base can be found in the IOC Application Developers Guide for R3.14.10, sections 9.7 and 20.6. General Time was originally written by David H. Thompson and Sheng Peng at ORNL, subsequently worked on by Babak Kalantari and Timo Korhonen of PSI, and merged into Base by Peter Denison from Diamond. Andrew Johnson provided input into the design at various points and made various code revisions after the merge.
When creating an IOC with one of the win32-x86 target architectures, a file dllPath.bat is now generated in the iocBoot/iocxxx directory which can be run to adjust the PATH variable to include all of the support application bin directories which might contain DLLs that the IOC uses. The PATH also includes the IOC application's own bin directory, which simplifies starting up the IOC as well.
Any C or C++ code can #include "epicsEndian.h" which defines four macros. The main one is EPICS_BYTE_ORDER and is defined to be either EPICS_ENDIAN_LITTLE or EPICS_ENDIAN_BIG (these are numeric constants 1234 and 4321 respectively). The fourth macro is called EPICS_FLOAT_WORD_ORDER and is needed because some ARM systems use mixed-endian format floats.
Note that just knowing the CPU's endianness doesn't tell you the complete story about the byte order that your hardware registers will present to the CPU; byte swapping is often performed automatically by PCI to VME bridge devices and by other kinds of bus converter, so "portable" drivers aren't always.
A heavily modified version of Andy Foster's genSub record type has been added, called the aSub (Array Subroutine) record type. The new name is so that genSub records can continue to be used in IOCs that need those features that have changed or been removed in creating the aSub record type. The main differences between genSub and aSub are:
The Soft Channel device support for all input record types now supports the fetching of the timestamp along with the data when the record's TSE field is set to epicsTimeEventDeviceTime (-2). This works for both DB and CA links. However the timestamp will only be fetched if the record's TSEL link is not set, so you can't point TSEL to another record to read the -2 value into TSE (that's because to make this work properly would require that the TSEL link be read twice every time the record processes; once in the soft channel device support, and again when the record type calls recGblGetTimeStamp().
Thanks to Eric Bjorklund for providing a patch to devLib that gives access to the CR/CSR address space (for those on a VME64 CPU with appropriate support from your BSP).
Query routines have been added that count CA client connections made by Access Security rules and Database Channel Access links. A similar routine will be added to version 2.0.12 of the sequencer for counting sequence program CA links:
void ascaStats(int *pchans, int *pdiscon); void dbcaStats(int *pchans, int *pdiscon); void seqcaStats(int *pchans, int *pdiscon);
The pchans parameter should point to integer storage which will be set to the total number of channels open, while the value at the pdiscon pointer will be set to the number of channels currently disconnected. Prototypes for these routines can be found in the header files asCa.h and dbCaTest.h (seqCom.h for the sequencer).
J. Lewis Muir provided patches to ensure that all messages printed on the IOC's console by the errlog subsystem are sent to the stderr output stream rather than to stdout.
This thread calls upon vendor libraries which may use significant amounts of stack. Account for this by providing the ipToAsciiProxy thread with an epicsThreadStackBig stack.
These three new commands are mainly intended for use with DESY's redundant IOC software but they might have some uses for others too. iocBuild allow an IOC to be initialized and set up ready for a quick start without actually making it live; a subsequent iocRun will bring it to the same state as an iocInit would have. Once an IOC has been started (using either iocInit or iocBuild + iocRun) the iocPause command can be used to freeze it, disconnecting its PVs and stopping all scan activity. The iocRun command restarts the IOC from this state.
While this might seem like a useful thing to be able to do, we have not tested it on IOCs using real-world I/O, and it is not unlikely that pausing an operational IOC could cause irremdial havok to any device support, sequence programs and other software which is not expecting it, so use with care and make sure you test it first. An IOC that is kept paused for more than a minute or two could fill up its network buffers and become impossible to restart without rebooting.
A fairly significant number of changes have been that were necessary to allow the IOC code to run properly on 64-bit CPU architectures where a long is 64 bits wide. This was not as simple as replacing every instance of the typename long with epicsInt32 because that would have broken a lot of external code unnecessarily. The generated record.h file now uses the typenames from epicsTypes.h to declare record fields, thus field sizes are the same on both 32- and 64-bit platforms (on 64-bit, a DBF_LONG does not map to long but to int). This change does not affect status return values, which are still implemented using the native long type for the platform.
While changing the conversion routines in db/dbConvert.c and db/dbFastLinkConv.c to support 64-bit architectures as described above, it was noticed that an empty string converts to the value 0 for all types other than DBF_CHAR and DBF_UCHAR where it converts to the ASCII character '0', value 0x30. Since these types are usually used for storing small integers or boolean values rather than ASCII characters, it was decided that this conversion is wrong so it has been changed to match the other numeric conversions.
APIs that are intended for use inside the IOC, the epicsShareAPI attribute is slowly being removed. This keyword is only used on MS Windows where it indicates to the compiler that the function should use Pascal calling conventions rather than C ones, and was necessary to be able to call such functions from MS Visual Basic. APIs for use by client code (CA and libCom) will generally retain the attribute if they already had it.
Thanks to John Hammonds at the EPICS Codeathon, the record type implementations have been converted from K&R to ANSI C prototypes.
Base now provides a CA client library interface for Perl5 scripts in src/cap5 and includes as examples some implementations of the catools programs written in Perl. Documentation on how to use the Perl library is available in base/html/CA.html after the build completes. This library cannot currently be built on Windows targets.
iocInit() installs an signal handler for ignoring SIGHUP. This fixes a problem that appeared with soft IOCs run as a procServ child on some Linux systems, where a disconnecting CA client would cause the soft IOC to get a SIGHUP and exit.
Several changes have been made to the build system, although these changes should not affect the contents of Makefiles or any applications using Base. They do however require that the version of GNU Make used be 3.81 or later. These changes are briefly:
A new tool is provided that expands out @VAR@ macros. By default it knows the value of @TOP@, @ARCH@ and any paths defined in the application's configure/RELEASE file such as @EPICS_BASE@, but additional macros can be defined in the Makefile that uses it by adding to the EXPAND_VARS variable like the example following, which creates an @EXE@ macro that expands out to .exe on windows targets and to nothing on other platforms:
EXPAND_VARS += EXE=$(EXE)
Files that contain @VAR@ macros to be substituted must have an at sign @ as the last character of their name and be listed in the EXPAND variable of their Makefile. The expanded file will have the same name as the original with the @ suffix removed, and is then available for compiling or installing using any other build mechanism.
Support has been added for installing Perl library modules. The Makefile variable PERL_MODULES can be set to a list of names of files to be installed into the $(TOP)/lib/perl directory. The above macro expansion facility can then be used in perl programs that use these libraries to set the perl search path to include that directory. The syntax for this is as follows:
use lib '@TOP@/lib/perl'; use MyModule;
The filenames listed in PERL_MODULES can include subdirectory path components and the build system will preserve these in the installed result.
Rules and macros were added for creating an *.acf file, access security configuration file, from an *.acs file using the C preprocessor. An .acs file has the same format as an .acf file with the addition of '#include "<filename>"' and '#define <macroname> <value>' lines. The C preprocessor includes the #include files and performs the macro substitutions.
In previous versions the INDX field of a subArray record was set to zero if the array that it reads through its INP field became empty. From this release the INDX field will only be modified by the record's process() routine if INDX is greater than MALM. In the event that the no data is read through the INP link, the subArray's UDF field will be set and a UDF/INVALID alarm will be generated.
The argument to scanOnce() is a pointer to the record to be scanned. This used to be a void * pointer, but is now a dbCommon * pointer. Record types written in C that call scanOnce() will still compile without having to change the source code (although a comiler warning may be generated), but any record types implemented in C++ will have to be fixed to cast the record instance pointer to a dbCommon * instead.
The following target architectures have been added to this release, although the core developers lack the ability to test all of them:
The compile line list of directories to search for header files now includes O.Common and the existing os subdirectories of SRC_DIRS <src_dir>/os/<OS_CLASS>, <src_dir>/os/posix, and <src_dir>/os/default.
The -j jobs option is now supported for users of GNU Make version 3.80 or later. The -j option speeds up building by allowing multiple jobs (build commands) to be run in parallel; this will have the most effect on hosts with multiple symmetric processors, but can also speed up uni-processor builds. Builds still work as before when run without -j, but using the -j option with an earlier version of GNU make will fail since this relies on the $(eval) function which was introduced in GNU Make 3.80.
The -j option has been tested with this version of EPICS Base, but it may not work for Extensions or IOC applications unless their dependancies are specified correctly.
New DIRS directory dependancy specifications are required to determine the directory build order with -j. For example if we have 2 directories, src and configure, and the configure directory must be built before the src directory, the Makefile should contain:
DIRS = configure src src_DEPEND_DIRS = configure
The directory dependancy specifications are only needed when -j is given to make. Without the -j the order of directories in the DIRS definition determines the build order as before.
Some sites may be using breakpoint tables that are not monotonic in one direction. In R3.14.9 both axes of a breaktable had to be monotonic; a table will not be loaded if either the raw or engineering values change direction. There are situations where this check is too strict however, so a new variable named dbBptNotMonotonic has been added that disables this check if its value is non-zero.
Breakpoint tables are often included in an IOC's .dbd file, but they can also be loaded from a .db file (although VDCT will probably not understand them). Since there is no way to set the above variable inside the dbExpand program that expands out an IOC's .dbd file (which also rejects non-monotonic breaktables), all applications that use such tables will have to load those tables separately, using either dbLoadDatabase or dbLoadRecords.
Added support for more 'Global Environment Variables'. Documented in the EPICS/RTEMS tutorial.
Set NTP server as well as nameserver and log server from server bootstrap settting.
The -ansi flag has been removed from CONFORM_FLAGS_STRICT and CONFORM_CXXFLAGS_STRICT -- there are many useful library functions whose prototypes are disabled when -ansi is used.
The value in the SELN field was not being checked against its limit, potentially causing a crash on some architectures.
To prevent an interactive shell from being started, give a -S (upper case) option on the softIoc command line. The old -s (lower case) option is still accepted, but now does nothing.
Some error messages output by the dbLoadRecords parser should be easier to understand, having been reworded to report what was actually the problem rather than just which routine found the error...
The iocsh command registration data and routines have been moved out of the src/iocsh directory (which now no longer exists) into a file for each library. At the same time, the iocsh implementation code has been moved into libCom. There is no libiocsh.a library created any more, so any applications (such as the sequencer) which explicitly list iocsh in a xxx_LIBS definition in their Makefile(s) will need to be modified to have the library name removed. In most cases though the library will have been included using the EPICS_BASE_IOC_LIBS or EPICS_BASE_HOST_LIBS variables that are set in Base, and thus no changes will be needed.
The cygwin make version 3.81-1 does not handle MS-DOS path names and thus does not work for EPICS builds with RELEASE file definitions. From the discussion on the cygwin mailing list it looks like this will be fixed in make version 3.82. In the meantime make version 3.80 or a fixed make can be downloaded from this website.
The following target architectures have been added to this release, although the core developers lack the ability to test all of them:
Wind River Systems do not support optimization levels beyond -O2 for vxWorks applications compiled using gcc, so optimized vxWorks builds are now set to -O2 only (we currently use -O3 everywhere else).
There was a bug in the portable channel access server library that prevented the PV Gateway from being able to handle and pass on alarm acknowledgements from the EPICS Alarm Handler ALH. This has been fixed in this release and should only require that the gatewey be recomplied against this version of Base.
The parser for the substitutions file accepted by dbLoadTemplate() has been revised, and is now stricter than it used to be — unmatched characters that were accepted and discarded without warning before will now generate errors. The quote characters at the two ends of a quoted string value must now match, although either single or double quotes can be used. Escaped characters inside a quoted string should pass safely through to the underlying dbLoadRecord() command. The characters permitted in a bareword parameter (i.e. a filename or value that is not inside quotes) have been reduced from the overly wide set allowed before; the permitted characters now comprise: a-z A-Z 0-9 _ - + : . / \ [ ] < > ;
Field value strings loaded from a database file by dbLoadRecords() can now use C89-compatible escaped character codes such as \", \', \t, \n, \064 and \x7e. The parser also now checks for and reports strings that have a newline character in them as an error - if you want a newline in a field, use the \n escaped version. These escapes only apply to the value part of a field() entry in .db file though; no other strings have escape codes translated.
These test programs are no longer installed into the bin/arch directory. Running all these programs on any host architecture is as simple as typing make runtests in the base top level directory or in any appropriate subdirectory. The runtests target uses Perl's Test::Harness module to execute all of the test programs and summarize the result. It is also possible to run individual tests as desired, by executing them from the relevent O.<arch> directory; the program output is designed to be comprehensible to humans.
For vxWorks and RTEMS, a test harness has been created that will run all of the test programs in a suitable order. At a vxWorks target shell, type:
ld </path/to/base/bin/vxWorks-arch/vxTestHarness.munch cd "/path/to/writable/directory" epicsRunLibComTests
On RTEMS, boot the bin/arch/rtemsTestHarness binary.
You may wish to capture the output from running these to a file to more easily check the results, since there is no wrapper program to collect and summarize the results of the individual test programs.
The handling of breakpoint table data has been reworked. It is now possible to give table data in either ascending or descending order, and the breakpoint data may have a negative slope such that the engineering values increase while the raw values decrease and vice versa. The only restriction on the data is that is must be monatonically increasing or decreasing, so you can't use a breakpoint table for curves that have local minima or maxima. This restriction is checked for when the breakpoint table is loaded.
The build configuration support for vxWorks 6.x has changed significantly, having been recombined with the older vxWorks 5.x support. The two target architectures vxWorks6-mv2100 and vxWorks6-mv5100 have been removed; IOCs built under vxWorks 6.x using these architectures must revert to the original vxWorks-ppc603_long and vxWorks-ppc604_long architectures instead. The configuration file CONFIG_SITE.Common.vxWorksCommon now specifies the vxWorks version number, as well as the filesystem path to the installation of vxWorks using the WIND_BASE variable.
The calc expression parser and exective have undergone a signficant overhaul, although the API and expression language supported are backwards compatible with one minor exception, described below. Significant improvements have been made to both the API and the expression language: Multiple values can be calculated and assignments made in a calc expression; Error reporting for humans is now supported by the expression parser, and code can discover what inputs and outputs are needed and generated by an expression.
Assignment operations are now possible, using the new := operator which must have an expression variable (A through L) to its immediate left. Multiple expressions can be included in the calculation string, separated by a semicolon ;, all but one of which must be assignments. The value of the whole string is determined by the single non-assignment expression, which may appear anywhere in the string. For example, the following string causes a single CALC record to output the successive values of a sine curve in 1 degree intervals: sin(a); a:=a+d2r
Previously any expression that performed an invalid operation which would generate a NaN or Inf result would be stopped immediately and return an error to the caller. Now it is possible to perform operations that generate NaN or infinite results, and the results are returned as normal. The result of the expression or the value assigned to a variable may thus be a NaN or an infinity. To permit this to be checked within the expression, the new operators finite(), isinf() and isnan() have been added to the expression language. The literal values Inf and NaN are also now supported in expressions.
The only incompatible change to the expression language was to change the NOT operator from performing a unary minus operation to an integer bitwise not; the former meaning is illogical and as a result was probably not used much, if at all — nobody complained when I discussed this on tech-talk...
The extended API and the expression language are now discussed in detail in chapter 19 (libCom) of the R3.14.9 version of the IOC Application Developer's Guide.
As a result of the above changes to the calc expression parser and executive, both the calc and calcout records and the Access Security library have been modified to take advantage of the new error diagnostics. The Access Security library has been made to reject any expression that contains an assignment operation, to prevent any possible security holes that might be caused by this significant change to the expression rules.
The calc and calcout records have had some subtle changes applied: To mitigate the effects of the Inf/NaN behaviour change, the result of an expression is checked for NaN, which will result in the UDF field being set and an Undefined/INVALID_ALARM being raised as a result.
An empty string is no longer a legal expression, therefor the CALC and OCAL fields have been changed so that their default value is a literal "0" string. Also any calcout record device support must now add the line #include "postfix.h" before the #include "calcoutRecord.h" line in the source code.
The recGblResetAlarms() routine (which is called by all record types towards the end of record processing) now optionally calls a single hook routine via the function pointer recGblAlarmHook after it has updated a record's alarm status and severity. See regGbl.h for the hook routine prototype definition, the routine is also given the previous values of the record's status and severity. The hook routine must not block, since this would hold up record processing.
These record types now support raw simulation mode. If the value of the SIMM field is 2 (enum string "RAW"), the SIOL link value is placed into the RVAL field and passed through the raw to engineering units conversion process just like the real device support's raw value would be.
The TIME field of a record is now displayed in a human readable format. TIME used to have an interest level of 4 since it was output in hex and not very easy to understand, but it has now been moved to interest level 2.
The convertRelease.pl parser now supports the use of -include statements in configure/RELEASE files as well as include statements.
Changes were needed to the configure/tools/munch.pl script to support vxWorks-MIPS targets.
A new facility is provided in libCom for use in generating automated test programs. Many (but not all) of the test programs in libCom/test have been converted to use this facility.
Off-by-one buffer overflow error fixed in dbFindField() which only seemed to affect vxWorks-(intel) targets.
Create a POSIX-compliant TZ environment variable from EPICS_TIMEZONE. Previous versions had an incorrect format which was ignored by tzset().
Added space for user extensions. This provides the infrastructure for the spy command.
Fixed error in epicsThreadGetName for non-EPICS threads.
Added hooks for application routines to supply special network configuration parameters. The RTEMS startup code calls epicsRtemsInitPreSetBootConfigFromNVRAM just before reading values from NVRAM and epicsRtemsInitPostSetBootConfigFromNVRAM just afterwards. See epicsRtemsInitHooks.h for prototypes and global variables.
e_flex has been modified to accept DOS line endings as well as Unix ones. The scan.c file was recreated using e_flex itself and the flex.skel file on the modified scan.l.DISTRIB source. initscan.c is not required or used for the EPICS build, so it has been removed.
devLib is now built for all architectures, whereas before it was only built on RTEMS and vxWorks. However for it to be usable there must be an appropriate table of OS-specific routines provided. For those OSs that don't implement these routines a default table is defined which will result in an error on any attempt to use devLib routines, but the default table can be overridden in an external library that provides an appropriate table. This subtle change was implemented to allow use of the SIS 3100 PCI to VME bridge from Linux, and needs no change to the other implementations of devLibOSD.c.
Added epicsThreadResume command.
mallocMustSucceed and callocMustSucceed accept 0-byte requests. Note that these routines may return a NULL pointer in such cases.
Added support for EPICS_HOST_ARCH=darwin-ppcx86 for building libraries/applications which will run on both PowerPC and Intel x86 targets.
Added support for EPICS_HOST_ARCH=darwin-x86.
On architectures whose native version of strtod() actually works properly (i.e. converts +/-Inf[inity] and NaN strings to their double equivalents) we managed to break the use of this in the R3.14.8.1 release. This is now fixed.
This release adds a fourth level of version number, which we haven't used since R3.13.1.1. The intention is to imply that R3.14.8.1 includes some small but important changes since R3.14.8 but no signficant new behaviours or API modifications. This fourth level has required us to modify the version number system and the macros in the epicsVersion.h file slightly though. We have taken the opportunity to introduce a new variable EPICS_SITE_VERSION to the file configure/CONFIG_SITE that adds an optional site-specific version number; sites that were achieving this by editing the configure/CONFIG_BASE_VERSION file should switch to setting EPICS_SITE_VERSION instead.
Mantis entries fixed:
232 - non-preemptive mode client relying on ca_poll does not always reconnect
These changes are required to allow software outside of Base to be built on win32 architectures.
The win32 Pascal calling convention (epicsShareAPI) has been removed from the following header files in libCom/misc: adjustment.h, cantProceed.h, epicsConvert.h, epicsStdlib.h, epicsString.h.
A new function epicsStrtok_r has been added because win32 does not implement strtok_r.
All function described in epicsStdlib.h are now implemented in epicsStdlib.c
The type name mapping array mapdbfType defined in dbFldTypes.h has had the correct export modifier keywords added to it for use on win32.
Configure files are now available to support the win32-x86-mingw (MinGW C++ compiler) and win32-x86-cygwin (WIN32 API with cygwin C++ compiler) host targets.
Configure files were also added for linux-x86_64 and solaris-sparc64 but these files are for experimental purposes only and to show that we are working on these targets. Currently these two 64 bit targets are not passing our test suite, so they must not be used in production systems.
An Extended Device Support mechanism has been introduced which is designed as a safe way to widen the API between iocCore and the device support software it interfaces with. An extended device support can now be notified of changes to a record's hardware address, and is given the chance to approve or reject that change.
As a result of introducing this notification mechanism, any device support that was capable of handling runtime address changes in prior versions of Base will have to be updated to provide the new interface, since the absence of extended device support is now taken to mean that runtime address changes are not understood by the device support. This requirement is not expected to affect many EPICS sites.
POSIX thread priority scheduling is now supported. There is a new user option USE_POSIX_THREAD_PRIORITY_SCHEDULING in the CONFIG_SITE configure file for using POSIX thread priority scheduling. For now the default value is NO. This has only been tested on a few versions of linux. On linux, in order, to use real time priorities the option must be set to YES and the ioc must be started with root privilages.
The definition VX_DIR was removed from configure/RELEASE and moved to configure/os/CONFIG_SITE.Common.vxWorksCommon. The configure/RELEASE* files should contain location definitions for EPICS modules only.
The definition RTEMS_BASE (and RTEMS_VERSION) were removed from configure/RELEASE and moved to configure/os/CONFIG_SITE.Common.RTEMS. The configure/RELEASE* files should contain location definitions for EPICS modules only.
The following files have been removed from base: drvTS.h drvTS.c, egDefs.h egRecord.c egRecord.dbd egeventRecord.c egeventRecord.c egeventRecord.dbd erDefs.h erDefs.h erRecord.c erRecord.dbd ereventDefs.h ereventRecord.c ereventRecord.dbd
These are removed from EPICS base. The version that previously came with base was the version that worked with the APS event system. It is available from APS. The version that works with the newer event systems that evolved from the APS system is available from the Swiss Light Source.
It was possible for taskwd (task watchdog) to not detect when some of the standard tasks failed. This is because they were passing their threadid rather than using epicsThreadGetIdSelf. It was possible to call taskwdInsert before the threadid was actually set.
dbLockGetLockId incorrectly always returned 0. dbBkpt (database breakpoint facility) is the only code that needed this. This caused unknown errors if the dbBkpt facility is used.
The maximum size was initialized to 65636 instead of 65536.
Add additional cast to prevent 'strict aliaising' warnings.
I/O redirection from vxWorks startup scripts now works.
This new variable which can be controlled using the iocsh var command (or by simple assignment in the vxWorks shell) allows users to change the behaviour of dbLoadRecords() when it finds a duplicate record definition. The default behaviour has always been to permit multiple record() statements for the same record name when loading record instances, but by setting dbRecordsOnceOnly to any non-zero value, duplicates will instead generate an error message instead. It is expected that this will only be used in special circumstances, to detect the presence of unintentional duplicates where it is known that they should not exist.
This record now sets and posts monitors on its SELN field indicating which of the inputs was selected, independent of which selection mechanism was selected via the SELM field. This makes it much more useful, especially when the High, Low or Median mechanisms are chosen.
Macro expansions in any program using the macLib facility from libCom can now include a default value which will be used if the macro named is not defined at the moment of substitution. The syntax for this is $(name=default) or ${name=default}. The default string can itself contain other macros like this: $(name=$(default)). This feature has actually been present since R3.14.6.
On a powerPC, during iocInit, a crash could occur. In particular the SYNAPPS version of save_restore experienced crashes. This is now fixed.
Mantis entries fixed.
221 - should shutdown full duplex comm on udp sockets if not used
192 - concurrency bug in channel access to local DB
181 - ca_host_name() now returns the host name of the client, not the host:port of the server
161 - issues surrounding manipulation of CA contexts
153 - CA (caput) client does not reconnect after server suspend-continue-shutdown cycle
111 - non-preemptive clients disconnect if ca_poll() isnt called regularly
Mantis entries fixed.
196 - portable server library intermittent hang on UNIX systems
191 - corrupt value when doing a put through portable server (little endian host)
175 - example portable server array PV 'alan' does not have time stamps
Mantis entries fixed.
211 - GDD: aitConvertStringEnum16 does nothing if pEnumStringTable==NULL
Added support for setting NFS server/mount information from PPCBUG argument strings.
rtems_shutdown_executive is now called on IOC exit. On many BSPs this will return control to the bootstrap PROM.
Set POSIX TZ environment variable from NVRAM, or failing that, from EPICS_TIMEZONE.
Cleaned up support for obtaining network configuration from NVRAM.
Added support for some additional boards.
Set iocsh prompt from host name.
Initialize in-memory filesystem from tar image following executable in bootstrap flash memory. This allows for fully standalone IOCs -- no TFTP/NFS server required.
Set IOC_NAME and IOC_STARTUP_SCRIPT environment variables from bootstrap parameters.
Fixed mantis entry.
179 -base does not build with vxWorks 6.0
225 - On vxWorks epicsThreadCreate returned -1 instead of 0 if a thread could not be created. This is fixed.
Builds on Tiger.
Readline now used by default.
Fixed mantis entries.
195 - explicitly unloading Com.dll causes crash
230 - assert fail of caget, caput, etc under msvc 8
231 - manifest files not installed under visual C++ 8
Fixed mantis entries.
186 - failure after exit command if log client is running
222 - osiSpawnDetachedProcess doesnt close open files in dupicate process on POSIX
The select record type has for a long time made use of a coule of magic numbers (1e+30 and -1e+30) to mean "not a real value", which prevents the record from working properly if one or other of these appears as an actual data value. These have been changed to use +Inf and -Inf or NaN instead, so +/-1e+30 may be used as a data value.
These record types have been modified to respond better to NaN values as follows: if the VAL field contains a NaN value, the UDF field will be set and an undefined value alarm will be triggered.
epicsStdlib.h declares epicsStrtod() which provides a version of strtod which handles NAN/INF on all architectures. All uses of strtod() in base have been converted to use epicsStrtod().
epicsStdlib.h also declares epicsScanFloat() and epicsScanDouble() which replace calls to sscanf with routines which handle NAN/INF on all architectures.
The posix implementation of epicsThreadCreate() now makes pthread calls to set the stack size. The sizes returned by epicsThreadGetStackSize() for the inputs epicsThreadStackSmall, epicsThreadStackMedium and epicsThreadStackBig are 128K, 256K and 512K respectively on at least the architectures Linux, Solaris, HPUX and Darwin (different values are used on vxWorks and RTEMS). This allows creation of many more threads on most systems.
dbNotifyCancel now waits if the userCallback is active when dbNotifyCancel is called. Previously it just returned. NOTE CAREFULLY. This means that the userCallback must not free the putNotify structure.
caget and camonitor now have an additional "-s" option to explicitly request server-side string conversion, which - in case of the regular CA server - leads to "precision" info (e.g. the PREC field of an EPICS record) being honoured.
Signals are blocked in all but the main thread. Applications/drivers which require signal delivery to a subthread will need to be modified.
Three new functions are implemented: epicsExit, epicsExitCallAtExits, and epicsAtExit. These are similar to exit and atexit, i.e. they provide the ability to register a function to be called when the process exits. They are provided becase neither vxWorks or win32 properly implement exit and atexit. Note that they apply to an IOC stopping NOT to a thread exiting.
In order to support iocsh redirection of stdin, stdout, and stderr, epicsStdio.h defines the following new functions: epicsGetStdin, epicsGetStdout, epicsGetStderr, epicsSetStdin, epicsSetStdout, epicsSetStderr, and epicsStdoutPrintf. epicsStdioRedirect.h defines macros that redefine stdin, stdout, stderr, and printf.
Any code that includes epicsStdioRedirect.h will automatically have it's stdio redirected. It has been added to many files in base. If code called by dbior wants it's output redirected, it must also include this file.
Any command that previously had an argument for a report file name no longer has the argument. The new iocsh redirection capability is now used. For example the former command:
dbl "0" reportName
Is now:
dbl > reportNameNote that this does NOT work on the vxWorks shell only on iocsh. On the vxWorks shell the following command can be given:
iocshCmd("dbl > reportName")
errlog now calls epicsAtExit and releases all resources when epicsExitCallAtExits is called.
epicsStrGlobMatch() routine added.
Input/output redirection added.
iocshCmd routine added (callable from vxWorks shell).
help command uses globbing.
The ODLY (Output Delay) was not handled properly. This is fixed.
make sure reset gets called when size of INP array changes.
Data Base Request Option DBR_ENUM_STRS for the DTYP field of soft records can cause an IOC to crash.
RTEMS implementation of epicsMessageQueuePending() now works.
Added support for MVME2100 BSP.
Added support for building RTEMS bootable images.
The cdCommands and envPaths files are now created in ioc* directory only when the ARCH defined in the ioc*/Makefile is present in BUILD_ARCHS for the build.
The complete set of Channel Access command line tools (caget, caput, camonitor, cainfo) is available as announced during the May 2004 Collab. meeting. Documentation is part of the CA Reference Manual. Be aware of possible name conflicts with existing local tools.
The directory name wildcards that were defined here have been moved to iocBoot/Makefile, which as a result is no longer unique in having its own configure/RULES file.
This is really a demo and a complete EPICS IOC application, not a template. It will be made available separately.
The EPICS_HOST_ARCH win32-x86-cygwin was renamed cygwin-x86 to avoid confusion about what OS interfaces are used on Windows: native win32 or cygwin's emulation of POSIX. Now we have
The time server's IP address used by the vxWorks clock routines was not reading the default value from the generated envData.c file but going straight to the boot host if no environment variable by that name was set.
These files are now parsed by a program that recognizes and ignores
comment lines. Previous versions of this parser would extract settings from
these files even if they appear on a line starting with a '#' character, so
the last line containing a setting for any variable would give the value used
as the default. This was first noticed in R3.14.5 where a commented-out
setting for the EPICS_TIMEZONE parameter was added
after the uncommented version.
Many of the commands crashed if given no arguments. They are now more crash proof.
When a CA user asked for display or control limits as a float a 0 value was returned as -1.17549435E-38. This is now fixed.
A new dbd rule will create a <name>Include.dbd from files specified in a <name>_DBD macro definition. An include line will be placed in the <name>Include.dbd for each file specified in the <name>_DBD definition. If a Makefile contains
DBD=xxx.dbd
xxx_DBD = f1.dbd f2.dbd f3.dbd
an xxxInclude.dbd file will be created containing the lines
include "f1.dbd"
include "f2.dbd"
include "f1.dbd"
and dbExpand will be invoked to create the xxx.dbd file from the xxxInclude.dbd.
Old solaris 6 specific compiler options have been removed.
The new top level Makefile only target, cvsclean, removes cvs .#* files in all dirs of the top directory tree.
The new archclean target is like the clean target except that O.Common directories are not removed.
Add epicsSnStrPrintEscaped.
epicsExportAddress(typ,obj) now generates an extern named pvar_typ_obj and epicsExportRegistrar(func) an extern named pvar_func_obj. Previously both just named the variable pobj.
epicsRegisterFunction(name) in conjunction with the dbd 'function' keyword can be used to register functions referred to by record subroutine name fields.
The access security configuration rules now accept quoted strings where just names were allowed previously.
All dump routines now have FP version.
A new shell command "ascar(int level)" is now available. It produces a report of the INP channel access connections. Level (0,1,2) produces (a summary report, summary plus unconnected channels, summary plus report of all channels)
This bug was introduced in R3.14.5 and does not exist in any other release.
Subscription updates intermittently do not resume depending on circumstances when unresponsive circuit reconnects
A decision was made to add a change to EPICS R3.14.5 so that when a TCP circuit is temporarily unresponsive the channel, but not the circuit, is immediately disconnected. This change was determined to be necessary to improve overall system robustness in the face of IOC or network overload. Unfortunately, an error was made when installing these changes. I am sorry about any inconvenience that this has caused. Thanks to Ken Evans at the APS for discovering this problem.
This bug probably exists in all R3.14 releases.
Passing a nill function pointer to ca_replace_access_rights_event() should install a noop handler, but this currently causes a failure.
Regression tests have been installed to detect this mistake.
This bug was introduced in R3.14.5 and does not exist in any other release.
CA client library crash when clear channel request occurs in get callback handler
When testing the striptool application, Ken Evans, discovered a bug in the CA client library occurring when a clear channel request occurs in get callback handler. Regression tests have been updated so that this mistake will not slip through testing undetected in a future release.
This bug was introduced in R3.14.5 and does not exist in any other release. Subscription request must be made from within connection callback handler
It has been discovered (by Ken Evans while testing the gateway) that certain subscription requests were persisting in the gateway after clients had deleted them. This bug causes additional resources to be consumed, but does not result in a crash.
Additional debugging has revealed that the CA client library in this situation inadvertently made the subscription request twice: once at the users’ request, and later on again when the library auto installed subscriptions for disconnected channels.
Probably introduced in a previous R3.14 release.
An intermittent C++ exceptions during regression testing.
In EPICS release R3.14 the CA client library is implemented using axillary threads. If the application does not call ca_context_destroy() these threads will still be running, and depending on operating system conventions the process may not exit if the main thread exits, but axillary threads are still running. Note that ca_context_destroy() is functionally equivalent to the deprecated call ca_task_exit().
This bug is only present in the portable CA server and so it does not impact IOC based applications. The bug is present in the CA gateway and any portable CA server based application. This problem may have been recently introduced when GDD was patched to properly handle fixed sized strings.
Failure, when writing large string through the portable CA server. There appears to be a possibility of the wrong string being written when a smaller string is used. You may see the following message.
A call to "assert (! this->pValue->unreference ())" failed in ..\..\..\..\include\smartGDDPointer.h line 88.
Thanks to Stephanie Alison at SLAC for discovering the bug and to Ken Evans at the APS for reminding me to fix it.
Don't seg-fault if no argument is passed to dbtr.
New files have been created in configure/os to allow CROSS_COMPILER_TARGET_ARCHS to include solaris-sparc-gnu and solaris-sparc-debug when EPICS_HOST_ARCH is solaris-sparc. Also CROSS_COMPILER_TARGET_ARCHS can now include linux-x86-debug when EPICS_HOST_ARCH is linux-x86.
A new function epicsStrnCaseCmp has been added. It is like strncmp except that it ignores case.
R3.13 compatability files are no longer generated automatically during the build. configure/CONFIG_SITE contains two new macros for building compatibility files. They are set to NO but can be set to YES. The macros are:
This will install the compatibility files needed to build R3.13 extensions built with this R3.14 base.
This will install the compatibility files needed to build R3.13 extensions and IOC applications built with this R3.14 base.
A new set of templates has been included in R3.14.5 to implement a Virtual LINAC in an ioc using databases and sequence programs. The Virtual LINAC simulates the generation and transmission of an electron beam down a LINAC. Several steering coils, BPMs, and other typical accelerator components are simulated to provide a realistic interaction between the operator and the "LINAC". Since it is an entirely soft application, it will work on any platform. An medm display is provided as the primary GUI. It can also be used to experiment with other CA client tools.
To install the templates, use the following commands:
mkdircd <base>/bin/<arch>/makeBaseApp.pl -t vlinac vlinac <base>/bin/<arch>/makeBaseApp.pl -i -t vlinac vlinac
For further information, see:
<top>/vlinacApp/misc/README <top>/vlinacApp/misc/Virtual_Linac_Info.pdf
record(stringin, "$(user)now")
{
field(DESC, "Current time and date")
field(DTYP, "Soft Timestamp")
field(INP, "@%Y-%m-%d %H:%M:%S.%03f")
}
Better error messages are now generated.
dbCaPutLinkCallback is a new function. It provides the ability to implement record/driver support that does not complete until a channel access put callback has completed. See the Application Developer's Guide for details.
dbCaAddLinkCallback is a new function. The caller can provide a connect and monitor callback. See the Application Developer's Guide for details.
Soft device that uses dbCaPutLinkCallback has been written for ao, bo, calcout, longout, mbbo, mbboDirect, and stringout records. The dbd definitions have been added to devSoft.dbd. In other to use the new support the DTYP field is defined:
field(DTYP,"Async Soft Channel")
The CALC and OCAL fields now have a size of 40 so that they are the same as the calcRecord.
calcoutRecord now has associated device support. The default support will act just like the old calcout. Support bis also available that uses dbCaPutLinkCallback.
The fields ZRST,...,FFST are now special(SPC_MOD).
The fields ZRST,...,FFST are now special(SPC_MOD). init_record now checks to see if state strings or values are defined during pass 0. Previously if another record had a DBR_STRING link to an mbboRecord it thought the field was a USHORT instead of an ENUM.
A new function has been added epicsStrPrintEscaped, which converts the standard C escape characters to \xxx characters.
The 'system' command has been added to the IOC shell. To enable this
command, add registrar(iocshSystemCommand) to an application
database description file.
This has been removed from base.
'printf-style' functions like errlogPrintf have their arguments verified against their format string when compiled with gcc.
The IOC shell now uses the vxWorks ledLib routines so command-line editing is now the same in the IOC shell as it is in the vxWorks shell.
If the CA client library was searching for a PV name that was hosted on more than one server a segmentation violation occurred when printing a diagnostic message resulting in a failure of the CA client library. The bug was introduced in R3.14.3. The code was tested on WIN32 prior to release, but the problem has so far been reproduced only on Linux.
Thanks to Ernest Williams at the SNS for discovering and helping to diagnose the problem.
If a CA circuit timed out during the connect sequence then the CA client library called the applications's disconnect callback function indicating a disconnect state transition when the channel was already known to be disconnected. This has caused the sequencer to improperly maintain its connected channel count. Other CA client side tools may also be impacted.
Recent versions of vxWorks appear to experience a connect failure if the vxWorks IP kernel reassigns the same ephemeral TCP port number as was assigned during a previous lifetime. The IP kernel on the vxWorks system hosting the CA server might have a stale entry for this ephemeral port that has not yet timed out which prevents the client from connecting with the ephemeral port assigned by the IP kernel. Eventually, after EPICS_CA_CONN_TMO seconds, the TCP connect sequence is aborted and the client library closes the socket, opens a new socket, receives a new ephemeral port assignment, and successfully connects.
Thanks to Mark Rivers for initially reporting the bug and energetically assisting with identifying the cause.
The record processing trace output generated when the .TPRO
field of a record is non-zero now includes the name of the thread that is
actually doing the processing.
Previously if a dbGetLink failed on one of the input links, dbGetLink was not called for the remaining links. Now it is.
put notify did not act properly if a record had disp=TRUE, i.e. if puts are disabled. It now returns putNotifyPutDisabled.
This is no longer supported
devLib is now supported on vxWorks and RTEMS. It has been moved from src/vxWorks/src to src/libCom/osi. devLibVirtualOS has been extended to support allocating A24 addresss and an init method.
On POSIX systems if a Channel Access application spawns off 3rd party software with an exec() call then all open file desriptors are inherited unless the close-on-exec flag is set for each file descriptor. A new wrapper function was created so that all sockets created in EPICS base will have the close-on-exec flag set on POSIX systems. The function which spawns the CA repeater with exec() used to close all open files except stdin/stdout/stderr. This step was no longer required and therefore was removed from the code.
The tmpfile() function on windows requires that all temporary files be stored in the root folder. The antelope (yacc) tool in base was calling tmpfile() and this was causing problems at sites where win32 systems use remotely mounted secure file systems. A wrapper function called "FILE * epicsTempFile()" that creates a temporary file on WIN32 with a name epicsNNN using one of the following paths was installed into libCom. It searches starting with (1) below and stops when it finds a specified path that exists. On POSIX systems, and systems that default to POSIX behavior, epicsTempFile() simply calls tmpfile().
For operating systems other than vxWorks, there is now a target file
created in each iocBoot/ioc directory called
envPaths, which performs the same functions as the
cdCommands file in vxWorks but using environment variables. The
entries in envPaths are derived from the contents of the
application's configure/RELEASE file.
Database (.db and .dbd) filenames passed to
dbLoadDatabase, dbLoadRecords and inside
dbLoadTemplate substitutions files will now have environment
variable macros expanded before opening. These are expressed using the
standard ${MACRO} syntax. Inside a template substitutions file
the filename must be enclosed in double quotation marks if macros are
used.
The registration routine generated by the registerRecordDeviceDriver.pl
perl script now includes the name of the application, thus requiring a
one-line change to any IOC startup files produced with earlier R3.14 releases
of base. The actual name is taken from a second command line argument
supplied to the script by the modified make rules, and is derived from the
name of the fully expanded dbd file from which the necessary information is
extracted. The change needed to every startup script involves using this new
name in place of the old registerRecordDeviceDriver. Assuming
that your application's fully expanded dbd file is called
example.dbd you would modify the lines
dbLoadDatabase("dbd/example.dbd",0,0)
registerRecordDeviceDriver(pdbbase)
to become
dbLoadDatabase("dbd/example.dbd",0,0)
example_registerRecordDeviceDriver(pdbbase)
-o outfile optionA commandline option -o has been added to the dbExpand
program to allow the name of its output file to be specified. If there are
any errors in the input file(s) the output file will not be generated or
modified at all. The rules to expand DBD files have been changed to make use
of this.
variable() supported in dbd filesDatabase definition (.dbd) files can now contain declarations of simple
static variables, a facility intended for driver debugging purposes. These
variable(name) or variable(name,type) declarations
are preserved by dbExpand (type is int if omitted),
and will be converted by registerRecordDeviceDriver.pl into code that
registers them with iocsh. The variables themselves must be defined in some
existing C or C++ code and marked using the macro
epicsExportAddress(type,name). Only plain int and
double types are supported.
macEnvExpand
A facility for performing macro expansion using environment variables as macro definitions has been added to libCom/macLib. The ioc shell now performs macro expansion using this on all input lines (other than comments) before printing and executing the line.
iocsh var command
For simple applications such as controlling the value of debugging flags.
Devlopers with more complex expression handling requirements should consider
use of the cexp package. The available variables are defined
by the new variable dbd file keyword.
iocshArgPersistentString
Tell iocsh to make a copy of the argument string before passing it to the handler function.
epicsStrDup
Operating-system independent replacement for strdup().
epicsMessageQueue
The epicsMessageQueue API has been changed. All functions and methods to receive a message now have an additional argument which specifies the size of the receiver buffer. The receive functions/methods return -1 and the received message is discarded if the received message will not fit in the buffer. See the Application Developer's Guide (libCom OSI) for details.
This is an incompatible change. All R3.14.2 applications which use epicsMessageQueue must be modified before they can be compiled and used with R3.14.3
A bug occurring only in Microsoft Windows port of the error message logging client was fixed. The symptoms were problems getting a Microsoft Windows based IOC to make entries in the log file.
A bug occurring in the error message logging server where a partial message arrives w/o a <CR> and then a <CR> from a previous message was found in the input buffer was fixed. The problem must have existed for a long time but probably was not occurring frequently. The symptom was garbled output in the log file.
An IP kernel deadlock vulnerability occurring when vxWorks's tNetTask calls logMsg because of a transient mbuf starvation situation has been fixed. The fix was to not call logFdAdd for the log client's socket and instead create a specialized vxWorks device driver which calls errlogPrintf for each incoming message and then call logFdAdd for a file descriptor opened with that device driver. The desirable functional change being errlogPrintf's capability to discard messages when it gets behind (because of a transient mbuf starvation situation). The fix also means that any code that calls errlogAddListener on vxWorks, e.g. CMLOG, will now receive the logMsg messages.
The symptom is a CA client program that fails with a segmentation violation on Linux shortly after calling ca_task_exit()or ca_context_destroy(). A fix will show up in R3.14.3. Regression tests were updated to detect this type of problem.
There appears to be a bug in the Red Hat 7.3 process rundown where posix thread support is defective when file scope destructors are being run. The symptom was a hang during process exit. A workaround was installed.
A patch was made to allow multiple CA servers on MAC OSX. OSX is a recent branch off of BSD and therefore requires socket option SO_REUSEPORT.
Build System
Major changes have been made to the build system. The good news is that the rules for support and ioc applications are now greatly simplified. The bad news is that it does mean changes for existing 3.14.1 applications. Please see:
ConvertingR3.14.1AppsToR3.14.2
for details. If you are using the function DBD keyword it no longer exists. Please read this conversion document for details.
Application Developer's Guide
The old chapter "New Feature's for 3.14" has been replaced by a new chapter "Getting Started". Please read it. It provides a simplified set of rules that can be used to build most support and ioc applications. Many minor changes have also been made.
dbGetLink
A bug in dbGetLink resulted in nRequest not being given the value 0 if the link is a constant link. This in turn caused the waveform record to always set NORD=NELEM. Thus if an application trys to write a waveform via the steps:
prset->get_array_info(paddr,&no_elements,&offset);
write nNew elements into array >>
prset->put_array_info(paddr,nNew);
This sets NORD = nNew. But because of the dbGetLink bug, the soft device support attached to the waveform record sets NORD to NELM.
This problem is fixed. The actual bug was in macros in dbAccessDefs.h
Access Security
The host names are now converted to lower case. This fixes incompatibilities between various platforms.
string records
Both the stringin and stringout records have two new DBF_MENU fields: APST and MPST. These control whether CA monitors are fired if the new VAL field string is identical to the old one. The default (zero) menu value is "On Change" with behaviour identical to before, set to "Always" if you want a record to fire monitors every time the record is processed (analagous to setting ADEL/MDEL=-1 for numeric record types).
epicsMessageQueue
A new facility that provides the capabilities of vxWorks msgQLib. See the Application Developer's Guide (libCom OSI) for details.
epicsStdio and errlogPrintf
A new facility has been added to libCom described by epicsStdio.h. It contains the functions epicsSnprintf and epicsVsnprintf. These are like the C99 functions snprintf and vsnprintf, which are like sprintf and vsprintf except that they accept a argument limiting the number of characters written.
The errlogPrintf facility has been modified to use this facility. Thus it is not longer subject to a possible buffer overflow.
scanPeriod
This is a new function provided by the Database Scanning facility. Given an index for the choices defined by menuScan.h, it returns the scan period in seconds. The argument can just be the scan field of a database record. If the index is not associated with a periodic scan rate, the value 0.0 is returned.
New epicsString.h function
A new function epicsStrCaseCmp has been added. It is like strcmp except that it ignores case.
macLib
macParseDefns did not check for handle==NULL. The documentation for macParseDefns was not correct.
function - New Database Definition Keyword
dbStaticLib and related programs now accept a new keyword in DBD files:
function(name)
Where name is the name of a function with "C" linkage that is
included in the IOC binary. This function will be automatically registered
with the registry at the same time as the record/device/driver tables, and is
intended to make using subroutine records much easier on non-vxWorks
systems.. Prior R3.14 releases required there to be a static registration
routine for such subroutines.
dbStaticLib has two additional routines to support this, dbDumpFunction() and dbWriteFunctionFP(). dbDumpFunction has been added to the iocsh command table.
iocsh
When executing commands from a script file, iocsh now echoes each command to the terminal before execution. This makes it much easier to see where errors are being reported.
Solaris build requirement
uname must be defined for builds on solaris hosts because it
is used to determine the solaris version.
Linux build note
Under linux-x86 only, when SHARED_LIBRARIES=YES it is now possible to have one or more directory paths burned into products as run-time locations for the shared libraries. In configure/os/CONFIG_SITE.Common.linux-x86 add any such absolute paths to the new make variable SHRLIB_SEARCH_DIRS (lib/<arch> will be automatically appended to each directory given).
RULES.Db
A *[nn].db file will be created from an
*.template and a *[nn].substitutions file ,where
nn has a value between 0 and 99.
Support for 64 bit long
Many changes were made to support architectures on which a long is a 64 bit integer. The basic change was to change:
The changes include the following:
Hardware Link Definitions
The various parts of hardware link definitions now accept HEX values, e.g.
field(INP,"L0 A1 C0 S0xa @")
NOTES:
dbDumpFldDes
A macro has been defined so that client code can be written that is compatible between 3.13 and 3.14.
epicsMutex for posix
Mac OS X
Now supported as development platform and as IOC.
RTEMS
Additional RTEMS-pc386 network drivers are available
iocsh
Configurable iocsh command-line editing support (none, readline, libtecla)
CA Reference Manual
Many additions.
CA Client Library
Bugs related to connection speed when creating new channels and other channels are not found fixed. Bugs related to proper schedualing in file descriptor manager based clients fixed. Many other bugs were fixed. Performance was significantly improved.
Original CA Server Library (still employed in R3.14 by iocCore)
A bug was fixed where the server was in rare situations using excessive CPU.
Portable CA Server LIbrary
Several bugs were fixed when performing integration testing with the channel access gateway.
GDD
Many bugs and missing features fixed.
dbCommon.dbd
Field UDF now has a promptgroup. This allows users to set UDF false via DCTs.
errlog
errlog no longer contains an atexit that calls errlogFlush. This did not work on all operating systems. cantProceed, iocsh, and ca_task_exit all call errlogFlush. Other applications may also have to call if before terminating.
mbboRecord
mbboRecord now implements method cvt_dbaddr for the VAL field. If no state vales or state strings are defined then it sets field_type and dbr_field_type to DBF_USHORT.
timeStamp changes
Changes have been made to:
epicsTime.h now has the definitions:
#define epicsTimeEventBestTime -1 #define epicsTimeEventDeviceTime -2
These are values for the TSE field of dbCommon.
If the TSEL field refers to the TIME field of a record then recGblGetTimeStamp sets TIME equal to the time it gets from the record the TSEL references. This works for both database and channel access links. In this case field TSE is not used.
aiRecord and aoRecord: Setting eoff=egul
Instead of init_record executing code like
if ((pai->linr == menuConvertLINEAR) && pdset->special_linconv) {
pai->eoff = pai->egul;
}
It now executes:
if ((pai->eslo==1.0) && (pai->eoff==0.0)) {
pai->eoff = pai->egul;
}
aoRecord has a similar change
This was done so that old device support which does not implement special_linconv still works.
CA puts to disabled record
If a CA client issues a put to a disabled record then, when the record is ena bled, database puts to the record will not make the record process until a CA pu t is again issued. This is fixed.
TPRO - trace processing
If dbProcess is called recursively by different tasks, it did not properly handle TPRO. Consider the following database:
record(ao,"mrkao") {
field(OUT,"mrkai CA")
field(TPRO,"1")
}
record(ai,"mrkai") {
field(TPRO,"1")
}
If a channel access put is sent to mrkao, no message is issued when mrkai is processed.
This is now fixed.
TSconfigure
If in your st.cmd file you issue the command.
TSconfigure(0,0,0,0,0,0,1)
And set the TSE field of any record to a non zero value, then a crash will occur when recGblGetTimeStamp is called.
This is now fixed.
calcoutRecord
nsev not sevr must be checked to decide if dbPutLink should be called.
dbCa
Whenever a connection is made, a request to retrieve the control, display, and alarm linits and the precision and units is automatically issued. Previously this was only done if dbCaGetAttributes was called. This it is no longer necessary to call dbCaGetAttributes.
calcPerform
This now returns a non zero value if the result is nan (not a number).
Record Name Length
The size of the name field has been expanded from 29 to 61, i.e. record names can now have 60 characters.
iocInit
initialProcess is now called before interruptAccept. This means that initial processing will be done before periodically scanned and I/O Inter scanned records start processing.
ellLib
Casts have been removed that suppressed valuable error messages
mbbiRecord
All existing manipulations of UDF in process() are removed and udf is set FALSE when the raw value is successfully read.
selRecord
In do_sel udf is not set false at the beginning. If selm has an invalid value recGblSetSevr(psel,SOFT_ALARM,MAJOR_ALARM) is called.
cdCommands file
Fixed a bug and revised the use of the IOCS_APPL_TOP setting in an application's <top>/configure/CONFIG file (which specifies the path to <top> as seen by the IOC) to apply the same modifications to all paths output in the cdCommands file.
dbStaticLib
All routines with Recdes of Fielddes in their name are obsolete and removed. A new routine dbDumpField replaces dbDumpFldDes.
devAiSoftRaw and devAoSoftRaw
A new state is defined for the LINR field. The name is "SLOPE", which allows any device type to be used with manual settings of the EOFF and ESLO fields. With this setting, the device support's special_linconv() routine is only called when LINR=LINEAR.
The RTEMS TFTP remote filesystem driver now supports a limited form of the chdir() system call. One restriction is that all pathnames passed to chdir() must end in a / character, so IOC shell commands to change directories must be given as
cd ../db/
The unbundled version of the sequencer has been build and tested with this release. You must obtain a version of the sequencer that has been built against alpha2.
A verion of the HPlanGpib support has been built and tested with this release. Again you must obtain a version that builds with alpha2.
A new update to the Application Developer's Guide is available for this release.
./configure/RULES.Db
./configure/RULES.registerRecordDeviceDriver
include $(TOP)/configure/RULES.registerRecordDeviceDriver
@$(PERL) $(TOOLS)/makeConfigAppInclude.pl $(T_A) $@ $(TOP)to
@$(PERL) $(TOOLS)/makeConfigAppInclude.pl $(EPICS_HOST_ARCH) $(T_A) $@ $(TOP)and add the line
depends: installto the bottom of the Makefile.
include $(TOP)/configure/RULES.Dbto
include $(TOP)/configure/RULES
DBDNAME = <name>Appto
DBD += <name>and remove the line
DBDEXPAND = <name>Include.dbdNOTE: If any of your *App/*Db/Makefiles contain "DBDNAME =" lines you should make these same changes in that *Db dirctory.
RECTYPES=<name>.hto
DBDINC+=<name>change
MENUS=<name>.hto
DBDINC+=<name>change
BPTSto
DBDchange
INSTALLDBto
DBchange
DBDINSTALLto
DBD
example_SRCS_DEFAULT += registerRecordDeviceDriver.cto
example_SRCS_DEFAULT += <name>_registerRecordDeviceDriver.cppwhere <name> is the base name of a <name>.dbd file which was created from a <name>Include.dbd file and which will be loaded in a st.cmd or stcmd.host script (e.g. example).
dbLoadDatabase("dbd/exampleApp.dbd")to
dbLoadDatabase("dbd/example.dbd")
dbLoadDatabase("../../dbd/exampleApp.dbd",0,0)to
dbLoadDatabase("../../dbd/example.dbd",0,0)
GNU compiler builds are now determined by the value of EPICS_HOST_ARCH and are no longer specified in CONFIG_SITE. All references to the ANSI (ACC/GCC) and CPLUSPLUS (CCC/G++) macros have been removed.
Most of the library routines and files starting with the prefix osi have been changed to start with epics. Several also had major changes to their user interface. See the latest version of the Application Developer's Guide for details.
This is the first release of 3.14. This is the first release that supports iocCore on platforms besides vxWorks.
iocCore is now supported on the following platforms:
Tornado II is required.
An open source real time operating system. It has been tested on MVME167 and MC68360 processors. RTEMS also supports powerPC.
Has been tested on solaris 2.6 and solaris 8 with Sun workshop 6.0 (C++ 5.2). Sun workshop 5.0 (C++ 5.0) will not compile this version of EPICS.
Has been tested on Redhat x86 platforms.
Testing has been done with visual C++ 6.0.
A new version of the Application Developers Guide is available. The following gives links to the new Application Developer's Guide and to RTEMS information.
http://www.aps.anl.gov/epics/base/R3-14/index.php
Most of the Application Developer's Guide has only minor changes. The following are new.
It must be emphasized that this is an alpha release.