On Apr 21, 2021, at 9:43 AM, Hu, Yong <yhu at bnl.gov> wrote:
>
> Has any facility built, smoothly deployed and happily used RPM packages for EPICS installation of the base and popular support modules (seq, asyn, motor, streamDevice, etc.)? Please share your repositories (or building rules / specs) and your experience. Thank you!
ITER has been building RPMs for all their software including EPICS modules on RHEL for many years, but I don’t believe they are allowed to share the results with the community for intellectual property reasons (administrative and legal, not for any technical reasons).
IP issues are just a small aspect of this...
Let me iterate (we have been presenting this at collaboration meetings).
The ITER controls division builds and distributes CODAC Core System (CCS), a RHEL based Linux distribution for all control system developments in the context of the ITER project. All CCS software is packaged as RPMs.
However, all CCS software modules are built using Maven. RPM packaging is done "under the hood" by a proprietary Maven ITER plugin, as a part of Maven's "package" goal, using the results of the Maven "compile" goal. Most CCS RPMs do not install in the standard RHEL system locations, but into a structure below '/opt/codac', the EPICS parts keeping the original non-standard directory structure.
If you are linked to the ITER project, you can register to become a CODAC Core System user and use the complete ecosystem.
Installing CCS RPMs on a standard RHEL system is technically possible, but as they are not generated in a standard way, do not follow all applicable Fedora / Red Hat guidelines, install in non-standard locations and often require other CCS packages, they are of very limited use outside CCS.
Cheers,
~Ralph
