RE: CapFast Rules in 3.13.4 RULES.Host

["Redman, Russell O." <Russell.Redman@nrc.ca>]

Dear Nick,

I would hesitate just a little bit on this one.  It will possibly work OK on
Unix/Linux systems, but the WIN32 version has a few problems.  I tested this
routine out on a small example in the source directory
C:\EPICS\src\example\capfast that contained a single example.sch file.  My
EPICS symbols are in C:\EPICS\install\R3.13.4\templates\capfast\sym. As
nearly as I can tell from the on-line documentation, the correct command
should be

	schfiles -h -l -o example.depends example.sch

1) Every invocation of SCHFILES.EXE pops up a pair of nested windows, even
if an explicit output file is requested.  It does not appear possible to
suppress these windows.

2) The resulting output file contains a LOT of explanatory text:

	DESIGN HIERACHY
	===============
	
	In the following design hierachy tree, lower levels of hierachy are
indented to 
	the right.  The number of dots preceding a name indicates the depth.
	The general format of an entry is,
		schematic/design name (instance name <-> symbol name),
	NOTE: instance name and symbol name are listed only where
appropriate.
	
	example.sch
	
	
	Schematic: .\example.sch
	    Symbol: c:\EPICS\install\R3.13.4\templates\capfast\sym\eais.sym
(1)
	    Symbol:
c:\EPICS\install\R3.13.4\templates\capfast\sym\ecalct.sym (1)
	    Symbol: c:\EPICS\install\R3.13.4\templates\capfast\sym\hwin.sym
(1)

It does not appear possible to get JUST the hierarchy. I suspect it might be
almost as much work parsing this file as it is to parse the original
schematic files.

3) The code seems to be stuck in the 8.3 file-naming era.  With the stated
command the actual file generated was example.dep.  The extension was
truncated to 3 characters without even a warning.  This is harmless enough,
except that it complicates the make files if the program cannot generate
files with the expected naming conventions.

4) According to the help message that is displayed when schfiles is invoked
without parameters
	SCHFILES: CapFast File List and Archive Utility, Release 3.02
	Copyright (c) 1993 by Phase Three Logic, Inc.                
	                                                            
	Usage: schfiles [options] filename...                            
	options are:                                                     
	-a directory:  copy design and all related files to directory    
	-h          :  list out the schematic hierarchy                  
	-l          :  omit files from ~p3\library and its subdirectories
	-o outfile  :  write file list to outfile                        
	-p pathlist :  set data file search path to pathlist             

The intent is clearly that the -l option should suppress the listing of the
primitive symbols.  These, in a normal EPICS installation, are generally in
the extensions/edif directory, or its installed equivalent.  Although it
would technically be possible to force these to be located under the
~p3\library directory, I do not think many EPICS sites do.

As a general comment, the use of the flag "-h" to list the hierarchy strikes
me as a little odd.  Intuitively, I would have expected that "-h" would
supply a help message.

I think the original purpose of this program is explained by the "-a"
option.  It follows all the dependencies, then copies all and only the
required files into another directory, effectively packaging the application
for standalone operation.  This is a very interesting operation, but not
quite the same as we need.

5) In principle, we can restrict the search path to the current directory,
which would be acceptable for simple EPICS applications, by adding the "-p."
switch to the command line.  This produces a large number of errors,
however, for the references to unresolved symbols:
	schfiles: Reading file example.sch ...                     
	schfiles: error: unable to open file ecalct.sym for reading
	schfiles: error: unable to open file hwin.sym for reading  
	schfiles: error: unable to open file eais.sym for reading  
	schfiles: fatal error: Reading file example.sch failed     

Perhaps Phase3 might add some options to SCHFILES to

a) -w => no windows, i.e. suppress the opening of the windows (command line 
	operation only with all output directed to stdout and stderr).
Alternately, 
	suppress the opening of the windows when -o is specified.

b) -m <filename> => format the output as a makefile dependency, i.e.

target : list of dependencies

	with no extraneous text.  Preferably, relative paths should be used,
not 
	absolute paths, so that files in the same directory do not have the 
	full path name prepended.

c) -q <path> => (opposite of -p) i.e. omit from the list any files that
appear 
	in this search path.  This would allow us to selectively supress the
listing
	of standard symbols that are located in nonstandard places like
epics/base
	and epics/extensions.

The program should always honour the requested file name in the -o switch
unless the file system rejects it as invalid.  

Alternatively, might it not be easier, faster, and more in the spirit of
EPICS, to translate Brian Bevan's csh script into perl so that it will run
on more platforms?

Cheers,
Russell O. Redman

-----Original Message-----
From: Nick Rees [mailto:n.rees@jach.hawaii.edu]
Sent: Thursday, May 03, 2001 6:10 PM
To: tech-talk@aps.anl.gov
Subject: Re: Capfast Rules in 3.13.4 RULES.Host



Something I realised a while ago and meant to post to the exploder about
Capfast dependencies. Brian Bevins posted a script to generate a Capfast
heirarchy - but I found that the Capfast distribution includes a program
to do the same thing called schfiles. So the upshot of the discussion is
that I intend to implement a depends target for Capfast using schfiles.

Cheers,

Nick Rees

Joint Astronomy Centre               Ph:       +1 (808) 961-3756
660 N. Aohoku Place                  Fax:      +1 (808) 961-6516
Hilo, HI.  96720                     Internet: n.rees@jach.hawaii.edu