Experimental Physics and
Industrial Control System

On Thu, 16 Dec 2021 at 09:34, Simon Rose <Simon.Rose at ess.eu> wrote:

In e3, the database files that are installed with a module will always be installed at the location $(module_DB) (an environment variable set by require when loading a module).

In general the e3 team at ESS recommends referencing the database file paths explicitly as opposed to relying on or manipulating EPICS_DB_INCLUDE_PATH; given that there are many modules installed together, it seems you could end up loading the "wrong" one in a possibly annoying to trace way.

Similarly, if database files are located relative to the current startup command, it would be best to explicitly reference the file as

dbLoadRecords($(E3_CMD_TOP)/path/to/database.db)

so as to remove ambiguity.

The more problematic case are substitutions files: the name (and possibly full path) of the template database are inside the substitutions file, which itself could be under version control from a different shared support module...

Cheers,
~Ralph