New to EPICS - wants to use motorMotorSim - Python client

[Guijarro Mathias Charles via Tech-talk <tech-talk at aps.anl.gov>]

Hi there,

I am new to EPICS. I would like to run a motor simulation driver (or is it IOC ? Or "server", well something I can use

to connect to, that would simulate the behaviour of a motor), and to test it with Python.

I do not want to try with Docker, as I prefer to have individual processes running locally, to learn about the

basics first.

Here is what I did so far:

- made a new Conda environment

- installed Epics from Conda , to have EPICS_BASE in $CONDA_PREFIX/epics

- cloned https://github.com/epics-modules/motor.git

    - and dependencies: https://github.com/epics-modules/asyn , https://github.com/epics-modules/sequencer

    - cloned submodule "motorMotorSim"

- compiled all those (first asyn, then sequencer, then motor)

    - had to guess a bit where to put EPICS_BASE directory in various configure/RULES etc

    - had to install "sun rpc" on my system, and "re2c" from conda-forge (if I remember correctly)

    - at the end I had to manually copy the include, lib, bin, dbd, db files ; is it the normal way ?

- I managed to set IOCS to True to have IOC compiled

So now I have 4 executables with the same name:

./motor/bin/linux-x86_64/motorSim

./motor/modules/motorMotorSim/iocs/motorSimIOC/bin/linux-x86_64/motorSim

./motor/modules/motorMotorSim/iocs/motorSimIOC/motorSimApp/src/O.linux-x86_64/motorSim

./motor/modules/motorMotorSim/motorSimApp/src/O.linux-x86_64/motorSim

They are different (not the same md5sum).

Running any of those gives me an "epics>" prompt.

What should I do, to run it to be able to test something with a Python client ? Or at least with caput/caget ?

How to configure it (limits, velocity, etc) ?

I could not find any guide for this on internet, or at least it was not as easy as I thought... So I prefer

to ask in order to get the "minimum viable information".

Later on I will try to run other simulated devices probably... So better to learn about the system "the hard

way" !

Any help would be appreciated.

Thanks in advance,

Matias.