Re: History of EPICS

[Joel Sherrill via Tech-talk <tech-talk at aps.anl.gov>]

On Fri, Feb 21, 2025, 12:33 PM Mark Rivers via Tech-talk <tech-talk at aps.anl.gov> wrote:

Hi Patrick,

 

• 4.) Is there a timeline for the publishing of the versions?

 

You can get that information here:

https://epics.anl.gov/base/index.php

 

• 5.) Are there some other important milestones, i.e. first version that runs on an x86?

 

You can use commands like the following to investigate that:

git clone --recursive git at github.com:epics-base/epics-base

cd epics-base

git checkout R3.14.1

cd configure/os

ls

git log CONFIG.linux-x86.linux-x86

 

The git log shows that the first release of that file was:

 

commit 3cf2a7bcb8ca3628d4c93949b4d73dd5c67b3b82

Author: Janet B. Anderson jba at aps.anl.gov

Date:   Fri Apr 7 21:18:01 2000 +0000

 

So it appears that x86 support was added in 2000, in the first version of R3-14.

What about when RTEMS support was added? I see a commit from Till Straumann to RTEMS around 2000 to make the mvme2303 work. 

There could be dates for when other cpu architectures were added. Coldfire, PowerPC, and m68k.

 

I believe that R3.12 and R3.13 only supported VxWorks.

 

Mark

 

 

 

 

From: Tech-talk <tech-talk-bounces at aps.anl.gov> On Behalf Of Nonn, Patrick via Tech-talk
Sent: Friday, February 21, 2025 12:17 PM
To: tech-talk <tech-talk at aps.anl.gov>
Subject: History of EPICS

 

Hi Everyone,

 

I am preparing a little introductory talk on EPICS, including a little history. I used the paper "EPICS: A Control System Software Co-Development Success Story" by Marty Knott et. al. But struggle to find something about the development past 1993. So I hope some members of the community might be able to help. Here are some concrete questions:

1.) Who joined the EPICS collaboration after the JLab? (And when?)

2.) Apart from Kinetic Systems, Tate Integrated Systems, and Titan Corp., did anybody else buy the commercial license?

3.) When was the switch to the open license?

4.) Is there a timeline for the publishing of the versions?

5.) Are there some other important milestones, i.e. first version that runs on an x86?

 

This is not crucial to my talk, but it would be nice, if my history of EPICS would not abruptly stop after 1993.

 

Thanks,

 

Dr. Patrick Nonn
LLRF-Experte | Maschine Strahlkontrolle (MSK)

---

Deutsches Elektronen-Synchrotron DESY

Ein Forschungszentrum der Helmholtzgesellschaft
Notkestraße 85, D-22607 Hamburg
Telefon: +49 40 8998-1962
Email: patrick.nonn at desy.de