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<== Date ==> <== Thread ==>
Subject: Re: VDCT groups
From: Andrew Johnson <[email protected]>
To: Luedeke Andreas <[email protected]>
Cc: Geoff Savage <[email protected]>, EPICS tech-talk <[email protected]>
Date: Tue, 03 Dec 2002 11:15:23 -0600
Geoff Savage asked: 

Is it possible to generate template and generator files from VDCT?  We
use both of these file types to populate our Oracle database from which
we generate .db files.  I also find it handy to do development work with
a template and generator file.

The spec for VDCT hierarchies does not use the old substitutions file format (which I presume is what you mean by a "generator file"), we're combining the two file types using a single syntax. This will need some some changes to existing systems that currently generate substitutions files, but the difference is small and the results are much easier to understand at a glance. This will be the syntax to expand a template:

  expand("slideMotor.vdb", slmot1) {
    macro(name, "sm1")
    macro(address, "4")
    macro(demand, "slide1:demand.VAL")
  }

This expands the slideMotor.vdb template file with the given macro values. The "slmot1" argument to expand() is a name for this instance of the template, and is needed for the new hierarchy port functionality (which will allow a template to pass values back up to the calling .vdb file).

For the time being VDCT will be the only tool capable of flattening .vdb hierarchies, but I'll be including a suitable command-line tool in R3.15 and by then the IOC itself may also be capable of doing the flattening at load time (although booting may be quicker if you load a pre-flattened .db file instead).

Luedeke Andreas replied:
>
> If VDCT would also handle the generator files, it could do full
> syntax checking on the expanded db files. Then a wrong assignement
> to a substitution variable in a generator file would show up as an
> error.

I'm not sure that we're asking Matej to do syntax checking across diagrams like that, but I might be wrong. In any case it will still be possible to check the syntax of the .db file after the hierarchy has been flattened by feeding the .db file into dbReadTest.

- Andrew
--
"Life is what happens while you're busy making other plans." - John Lennon

References:
VDCT groups John Maclean
Re: VDCT groups Matthias Clausen
Re: VDCT groups Luedeke Andreas
Re: VDCT groups Geoff Savage
Re: VDCT groups Luedeke Andreas
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