Re: IOCs - What are the built-in device types?

["Donadio, Marcio Paduan via Tech-talk" <tech-talk at aps.anl.gov>]

What I’ve been doing is approving pull requests only if the corresponding documentation is updated. For our repositories, it’s easier because the documentation source lives in the same repository. But one could add a link to the documentation change in the pull request description to claim it.

With this idea, the pull request that created "Soft Timestamp” and “getenv” built-in device types would require an update to the corresponding documentation before the pull request is accepted.

Instructions on CONTRIBUTING.md would be needed, but this is also a process change for the team that makes the reviews.

Cheers,

Marcio

From: Johnson, Andrew N. <anj at anl.gov>
Date: Tuesday, July 28, 2026 at 14:55
To: Donadio, Marcio Paduan <marcio at slac.stanford.edu>; tech-talk at aps.anl.gov <tech-talk at aps.anl.gov>
Subject: Re: IOCs - What are the built-in device types?

HI Marcio,

I'm not quite sure what you're asking for here, or who you're addressing. We do now have a CONTRIBUTING.md file in the top of the source tree. It asks that all new features come with automated unit tests, but it doesn't currently mention adding documentation at all. Maybe an addition to that document would be the appropriate place for your suggestion?

Thanks,

- Andrew

-- 

Complexity comes for free, Simplicity you have to work for.

On 7/28/26, 12:28 PM, "Donadio, Marcio Paduan" <marcio at slac.stanford.edu> wrote:

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I’ve been incentivizing my team to add documentation or test code for the pull requests when it makes sense. Maybe we could request this from EPICS pull request authors?

Cheers,

Marcio Donadio

Embedded Systems Engineer | TID-ID-CSE

SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory

slac.stanford.edu

From: Tech-talk <tech-talk-bounces at aps.anl.gov> on behalf of Johnson, Andrew N. via Tech-talk <tech-talk at aps.anl.gov>
Date: Wednesday, June 17, 2026 at 18:42
To: David Bracey <dbracey at fnal.gov>; tech-talk at aps.anl.gov <tech-talk at aps.anl.gov>
Subject: Re: IOCs - What are the built-in device types?

Hi Dave,

The published output from my pull request documenting the built-in device support can be found here, beware any AI hallucinations or dragons that may be present. Review comments and suggestions can go here if you have any.

Hope it helps!

- Andrew

-- 

Complexity comes for free, Simplicity you have to work for.

On 6/17/26, 11:14 AM, "Tech-talk" <tech-talk-bounces at aps.anl.gov> wrote:

Hi Dave,

Great question, unfortunate answer: The current documentation doesn’t really cover those other DTYPs. Many of the record types have some documentation on their own soft and raw soft channel support, and there were entries in the Release Notes for some of the newer device supports that were integrated. The list of device support layers provided by Base can be found in the dbd/devSoft.dbd file of any EPICS 7 release after building, and it’s worth doing a Google search for any specific layer you’re interested in, but you might end up having to read the source to get some specific details at the moment (or ask here).

I may follow up with something written by Claude Code, which I have asked to fill in those gaps.

- Andrew

-- 

Complexity comes for free, Simplicity you have to work for.

On 6/17/26, 9:44 AM, "Tech-talk" <tech-talk-bounces at aps.anl.gov> wrote:

There are apparently built-in device types that provide various useful data sources:

  #  get the current time-of-day

  field(DTYP, "Soft Timestamp")
  field(INP,  "@%m/%d/%Y %H:%M:%S%z")

  # get the specified environment variable

  field(DTYP, "getenv")
  field(INP, "@ENGINEER")

Where can I find documentation of these built-in DTYP's?