Re: Macros limited (edition ;-)

[Andrew Johnson <anj@aps.anl.gov>]

Hi Dominique,

On 2013-07-05 Dominique Touchard wrote:
> It seems that the number of macros for template substitutions during IOC
> startup is limited to 100. Over, a segmentation fault stop the IOCs.
> 
> Is this number correct? Is there any reason?

I was surprised but you're right, src/dbtools/dbLoadTemplate.y defines 
VAR_MAX_VARS as 100 which sets a limit to the number of variables that 
dbLoadTemplate() can handle.  It also defines VAR_MAX_VAR_STRING as 5000 
setting the maximum size of the "variable=value,..." string which it 
constructs to pass to dbLoadRecords().  In neither case though does it check 
when the storage limit set by those macros gets exceeded, thus causing a 
crash.  This is obviously unacceptable and needs to be fixed in Base.

To get around this limit for a particular application you could do the 
template expansion on the host at build time using the msi (Macro 
Substitution and Include) program which is distributed as an EPICS extension.  
You can also increase the above values in your source code and rebuild base, 
which might be a simpler fix in some circumstances.

I have filed a bug-report for this issue.  If someone feels inclined to look 
at rewriting the dbLoadTemplate() code to remove these limitations please let 
me know.
    https://bugs.launchpad.net/epics-base/+bug/1198234

- Andrew
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