EPICS RE: jca question

Experimental Physics and Industrial Control System

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<== Date ==>		<== Thread ==>

Subject:	RE: jca question
From:	"Shroff, Kunal" <[email protected]>
To:	"J. Lewis Muir" <[email protected]>, 梁雅翔 <[email protected]>, "Shankar, Murali" <[email protected]>
Cc:	tech-talk <[email protected]>
Date:	Thu, 29 Jun 2017 13:48:44 +0000

Hi Lewis, 

We have tried to break your comments down into individual Issues which you can follow on github (https://github.com/epics-base/jca/issues).

Maven central is the place from where you can directly download the jca/caj jars along with their sources and javadocs.
for caj 
https://search.maven.org/#search%7Cgav%7C1%7Cg%3A%22org.epics%22%20AND%20a%3A%22caj%22
for jca
https://search.maven.org/#search%7Cgav%7C1%7Cg%3A%22org.epics%22%20AND%20a%3A%22jca%22

We shall be updating the links wherever present to point to the maven central location.

There will be a new release on the caj library before the fall epics meeting, which will have the recent bug fixes and upgrades.

Thanks again, 
Kunal

-----Original Message-----
From: [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of J. Lewis Muir
Sent: Monday, June 26, 2017 6:16 PM
To: 梁雅翔 <[email protected]>
Cc: tech-talk <[email protected]>
Subject: Re: jca question

On 06/23, 梁雅翔 wrote:
> Hi all,
>     I met some question when I install the channel archiver.
>     I should install the caj first as the web said: http://slacmshankar.github.io/epicsarchiver_docs/details.html. 

Hmm, I see no reference to JCA on that page.  And I see only one reference to CAJ where it says that the EPICS archiver appliance includes a bundled version.  But maybe someone has just recently edited that page so it's no longer as it appeared for you?

>     The Download lind was broken, the Sourceforge link took me to "Java Channel Access", does JCA was CAJ ?
>     then when I try to install JCA (Java Channel Access), I met the question.
>  
> my jca was put in /base/extension/src and jdk was installed.
> Feora 23, linux86_64, base 3.1.12.5

That version of EPICS Base does not exist.

Basically, the JCA/CAJ experience for a developer is quite poor.

The download links at the JCA and CAJ websites [1][2] are both broken.

And if I search on the Maven Central Repository [3] for caj, I find two artifacts with that ID under two group IDs: com.netopyr.caj and org.epics.  I don't know anything about the first, and the second, taken as a reverse domain name takes me to <http://epics.org/> which says the
following:

  Disclaimer

  Opinions expressed on this personal web site are my own only and
  do not reflect those of any institutions or organizations. It is
  hosted by a private service provider and paid for entirely by myself.
  As always, I invite your feedback and value your suggestions and
  directions.

  Thanks, Bill Rawnsley

That's not very reassuring for someone trying to confirm the authenticity of the artifact.

Then searching Google for "maven org.epics" (without the double-quotes) finds some hits in pom.xml files under <https://github.com/epics-base>.
Looking at those shows me that some official EPICS modules are using the jca and caj artifacts under the org.epics group ID, and so I conclude they are probably the ones I want.

The jca and caj artifacts are signed (by an entity known as "Epics Jenkins <[email protected]>" with key fingerprint 7A43 0EA3 F855 AF1A 0257 67EC 95BF A9B8 77E6 0641), so that would seem an obvious way to verifying their authenticity.  Unfortunately, I don't know of any information anywhere about who signs the artifacts and who else has signed the key used to sign the artifacts.  I have no way to establish a trust path.

Lastly, looking at the CAJ website under Changes shows that the last released version was 1.1.15 on 2015-03-25.  There's also a listing for version 1.1.16 with a release date of "2015-xx-xx" [sic].  Looking at the source code repository referenced on the CAJ website, there have been 5 commits on the default branch since the 1.1.15 release, the last commit occurring on 2015-06-29.  Why is there no release that includes the commits that fixed bugs?  Have there really been no commits in almost 2 years?

I'm hoping all of this improves with a move to GitHub and new maintainership mentioned in [4] (although I know nothing about what's planned).

To answer your question, to get JCA and CAJ, you should just use an existing JAR from the Maven Central Repository [1]; you don't need to compile the JARs from source.  You can just search for:

  g:"org.epics" AND a:"jca"

and:

  g:"org.epics" AND a:"caj"

Use the "jar" download link for each.

Regards,

Lewis

[1] http://epics-jca.sourceforge.net/jca/
[2] http://epics-jca.sourceforge.net/caj/
[3] https://search.maven.org/
[4] http://www.aps.anl.gov/epics/tech-talk/2017/msg00950.php

References:: jca question 梁雅翔; Re: jca question J. Lewis Muir

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