Re: areaDetector build system question

[Ralph Lange via Tech-talk <tech-talk at aps.anl.gov>]

On Thu, 13 Mar 2025 at 05:21, Jörn Dreyer via Tech-talk <tech-talk at aps.anl.gov> wrote:

is it possible to build an areaDetector module outside of the tree?

Sure. Mark pointed out a few that do it.

For ITER's CODAC Core system, I'm building and packaging all modules separately: core, simdriver, genicam, aravis, pilatus, simba.

I tried to use ad-core as it is and failed, as it does a few things in a non-standard way that makes such separation really hard.

With one core module and many driver modules (getting more over time), I decided to help long-term maintenance by concentrating changes in the one core module.

So, changes are mostly in ad-core. I have one patch file (unchanged since ADCore 3.11) that:

- comments out all the plugins that we don't use

- sets things up correctly in configure/CONFIG_SITE

- removes all the auto-converted displays for display managers we don't use

- improves the dbd file setup to cleanly separate ad-core "AD.dbd" and the whole stack "ADSupport.dbd"

- installs iocBoot/EXAMPLE_commonPlugins.cmd and iocBoot/EXAMPLE_commonPlugin_settings.req (also renames them and puts .req into db/)

- installs make snippets ADApp/commonDriverMakefile and ADApp/commonLibraryMakefile (renames them to mark them as AD things)

With that streamlined ad-core, changes for the drivers are pretty minimal:

- setting of EPICS_BASE and AREA_DETECTOR in a RELEASE.local

- patch Makefile to include the Makefile snippets (commonDriverMakefile/commonLibraryMakefile) from their new locations/names in the install area

 

The stuff is using ITER's build system (uuuuhh), located on our internal (eeeehh) Subversion (whooooaa) server.

I'm happy to send the patches, though, or a combination of, e.g., core/simdetector sources that is set up this way.

@Mark: If you were willing to move upstream AD in that direction, I could be talked into preparing a Pull Request.

Cheers,
~Ralph