Re: dbdlint (dbd/db verify tool)

["Johnson, Andrew N. via Tech-talk" <tech-talk@aps.anl.gov>]

Hi Sue,

On Mar 29, 2019, at 2:35 PM, Sue Witherspoon via Tech-talk <tech-talk@aps.anl.gov> wrote:
> 
>   I am trying to upgrade to use EPICS 3.15.6 and my standard database make tool used to a database verification while converting a vdct vdb file. So the dbStaticHost.lib is gone. So I wanted to replace that functionality with Michael Davidsaver's dbdlint script.

I can’t help you with Michael’s script, but if you have an installation of Base-7.0.x it contains a Perl script called dbExpand.pl that you can use to verify a DB file (and yes it works fine with DB and DBD files from 3.15.6).

Here’s the output I get from running it on your junk.db file with the 3.15 base.dbd:

> woz$ base-7.0/bin/darwin-x86/dbExpand.pl -I base-3.15/dbd -o /dev/null base.dbd junk.db 
> dbExpand.pl: Can't set ASLO to ''
> Context: record(ai, iocdevp4Apps:VMIc0979:C979_Chan05) in file '/Users/anj/Downloads/junk.db'
>   while reading '/Users/anj/Downloads/junk.db' to create '/dev/null'
> dbExpand.pl: Exiting due to errors


It’s a bit stricter than the IOC's parser which IIRC treats an empty string as the value 0, but you probably wouldn’t want to set ASLO to 0 anyway…

Note that because you're using base.dbd (which isn’t fully expanded) I give it a -I path that tells it where to find all the dbd files that base.dbd includes. It’s possible that may be the source of your issue with dbdlint, and if you were to use the softIoc.dbd file instead (which is fully expanded) your dbdlint experiment might succeed. Just a guess though.

The dbExpand.pl script will eventually become capable of fully expanding a VDCT .vdb file, but the copy that comes with Base-7.0.2 doesn’t have that code included yet. I have a version that I think works as well as VDCT’s flattening tool, but I haven’t touched it in a while and I want to make it better than VDCT which can’t handle really complex template hierarchies where ports are defined using macros from the parent/grandparent and vice-versa.

HTH,

- Andrew