Re: Building EPICS for multiple Linux distributions

[John Hammonds <JPHammonds@anl.gov>]

I have implemented a system like this for the beamlines at the APS but 
warn that this gets a bit messy.  Actually it turns out that setting 
this up is fairly trivial but using it gets to be a bit of a pain.  As 
you said, on the build side this is basically just creating the new 
architecture files for the different builds and setting your host arch 
properly.  In our case we ended up with linux-x86-fc4(now defunct), 
linux-x86-fc6 and linux-x86_64-el5, (we had solaris-sparc-v10-gnu, 
solaris-sparc-v09-gnu, and solaris-x86-v10-gnu as well).  After copying 
the correct files (i.e. CONFIG.Common.linux-x86-fc6, 
CONFIG.linux-x86-fc6.Common, CONFIG.linux-x86-fc6.linux-x86-fc6, 
CONFIG_SITE.linux-x86-fc6.linux-x86-fc6) from there originals I 
basically just set the EPICS_HOST_ARCH and then did make on an 
appropriate host.  This got us through a fair number of incompatibilites 
in the systems.

The downside of this is now maintenance and use.  On the use side I set 
up some scripts to analyze the system type and set the appropriate host 
arch.  On the maintenance side it depends alot on the size of the 
facility and your ability to limit what kind of systems are out there.  
You may face the problem of not being able to advance everyone at the 
same time and then figure out keeping the environment for all users correct.

HTH,
John

On 3/10/2010 8:45 AM, John Dobbins wrote:
> I was wondering if anyone can suggest an approach for building EPICS 
> on multiple linux distributions (which may have different kernel 
> versions, compiler versions, etc.)
>
> Does one define new architectures linux-x86-distribution_a 
> linux-x86-distribution_b?
>
> John Dobbins
> Lab for Elementary Particle Physics
> Cornell University

--
John Hammonds
Beamline Controls and Data Acquisition Group
APS Engineering Support Division

Argonne National Laboratory
JPHammonds@anl.gov<mailto:JPHammonds@anl.gov>
(630)252-5317