RE: Unable to build support modules on Windows, with base 3.15.2

[Mark Rivers <rivers@cars.uchicago.edu>]

Hi Mark,

> AND the various commands scripts to initialize Softioc's and set paths for synapps modules used also imply that your actually doing this from inside a 
> linuxy shell of some sort - I'm assuming Cygwin.

Which scripts are you referring to?  In the iocBoot directories I try to have both .bat files and Linux scripts to start the IOCs for detectors that can run on both.

> I'd love to see Jenkins build of all the area detector stuff as well because , worse case, you just download all the bits that are already know to be working. 

Jenkins does build the areaDetector software now whenever there is a commit in the top-level areaDetector/areaDetector directory.

However, this currently has a number of limitations:

- It is only building ADCore, not the detector drivers

- It is only building on the master branch, not on stable release branches. 

Thus, it is not currently suitable for producing executables for real detectors.

I build such prebuilt packages for many detectors myself.  These contain much more than just the module for a specific detector.  They need to include the db/, op/, and bin/ directories from a number of other modules (base, asyn, calc, busy, etc.).   Using those prebuilt modules one does not need an EPICS development system at all.

>  Ideally, cloning whatever Mark Rivers Uses as a development platform.

I build using the standard tools listed on the EPICS Web page: Visual Studio 2010, ActiveState Perl, make 4.1 from the link on that page.  I build for all platforms (Windows, Cygwin, Linux, Darwin, VxWorks) on the same Linux file system so there is a single working directory.  I use the standard Windows cmd shell when building with Visual Studio.

Mark



-----Original Message-----
From: tech-talk-bounces@aps.anl.gov [mailto:tech-talk-bounces@aps.anl.gov] On Behalf Of Mark Engbretson
Sent: Thursday, September 24, 2015 9:26 AM
To: Peterson, Kevin M.
Cc: Engbretson, Mark S.; tech-talk@aps.anl.gov
Subject: Re: Unable to build support modules on Windows, with base 3.15.2

AND the various commands scripts to initialize Softioc's and set paths for synapps modules used also imply that your actually doing this from inside a linuxy shell of some sort - I'm assuming Cygwin.

These pages really should say,  load these exact  versions of everything  required from locations that are not going to change so that when people build these things, they are all on exactly the same page . would reduce all the tech talk issues of people getting errors that no one else seems to see, because it is vague what the actual build configuration is.

I'd love to see Jenkins build of all the area detector stuff as well because , worse case, you just download all the bits that are already know to be working. If it would possible, would be nice to have some sort of virtual system, development environment - but can't really do that with Windows.  Ideally, cloning whatever Mark Rivers Uses as a development platform. 

If someone is forced to use old versions of base, or odd configurations of synapps, they might be on their own more.  But is always annoying when you are trying some of this stuff on a fresh system and things don't work because the shakers and movers actually have some value added bits that don't get mentioned.





On Sep 24, 2015, at 08:55, Peterson, Kevin M. <kmpeters@anl.gov> wrote:

> On 9/16/15 3:46 PM, J. Lewis Muir wrote:
> Hi, Mark.
> 
> Andrew has such a web page for EPICS Base at:
> 
> http://www.aps.anl.gov/epics/base/win32.php

One of the problems with that web page is that you can read all of it
and still not know which version of Visual Studio you should use to
build on Windows.  It contains references to three different versions of
Visual Studio:

Visual Studio 2010 Express edition
Visual Studio 2012 Express edition
Visual Studio 2013 Express edition

The "Microsoft Visual Studio/C++ Express" download link contains a link
to download Visual Studio Community 2015, which will only build
base-3.14.12.5 if you know/remember to apply a patch from the known
problems page.  If you succeed at building base, you'll encounter more
problems when you try to build other EPICS modules.

The web page should recommend Visual Studio 2010.  This is the version
the jenkins build server currently uses to build EPICS base.  My
understanding is that it is also the version that is used to compile the
prebuild areaDetector support.

Kevin