Communicating with Bechoff I/O through EPICS

[Sibylle Ducroizé via Tech-talk <tech-talk at aps.anl.gov>]

Hello,

I have just started working on an update of the control system software for an accelerator.
I am still trying out different configurations and learning how to use EPICS. I followed the tutorial of the EPICS documentation so I know basic information about IOCs and have common support modules installed (asyn, calc, streamDevice,...)

I would like to communicate with Beckhoff I/O terminals, both as a way to learn EPICS and to try out configurations for the final project. I have tried following this advice from a previous tech-talk question from 2018.
So far I have installed etherlab's ethercat master and I've tried installing PSI's ecmc which needs e3 to build. Unfortunately, e3-build fails to install epics base so I didn't get very far...I am on ubuntu which might be the problem.

My questions :

1. Are there maintained EPICS drivers for communicating with Beckhoff I/O ?

    1.a. If so, is ecmc a good option ? (As it depends on e3, meant to run on centOS which is obsolete)

    1.b. Are there other similar alternatives ?

2. Should I basically write my own drivers ?

    1.a. An advice / general approach for me to follow as I am new to EPICS ?

Thanks,

Sibylle