RE: Issues Installing Galil EPICS Drivers – sscan & seq Dependencies Not Building

[Mark Rivers via Tech-talk <tech-talk at aps.anl.gov>]

Hi Jonathon,

 

What version of EPICS base are you using?  Have you modified anything in it?

 

Last week you reported a problem building asyn.  I could not reproduce your problem, and then Andrew Johnson suggested that you move support/ so it was not under EPICS base.  Did you do that, and did it fix your problem? 

 

I am not aware of anyone else reporting a problem with lexer, so there must be something different with your installation.  Is this Ubuntu 22?  I built base successfully on that last week, including seq and sscan with base 7.0.9.

 

Mark

 

From: Tech-talk <tech-talk-bounces at aps.anl.gov> On Behalf Of Jonathan Hai via Tech-talk
Sent: Monday, March 10, 2025 12:39 PM
To: tech-talk at aps.anl.gov
Subject: Re: Issues Installing Galil EPICS Drivers – sscan & seq Dependencies Not Building

 

Subject: Follow-up: Issues Installing Galil EPICS Drivers – seq & sscan Still Not Building

Hi Kasemir,

I appreciate the help so far regarding my Galil motor driver installation issues. I've followed the advice given and have attempted multiple fixes, but I’m still unable to get the required dependencies (seq and sscan) to build.

Recap of the Issue

1. I need to install the Galil motor drivers, but the build fails because sscan does not compile.
2. sscan fails because scanProg.o is missing, which (I believe) needs seq to be installed.
3. seq fails to build due to a missing lexer.c, which should be generated from lexer.l by e_flex.
4. e_flex is broken on my system, preventing lexer.c from being created.

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Steps I Have Taken So Far

1. Verified e_flex and antelope Exist in EPICS Base

• Both e_flex and antelope are present in /home/jonathanhai/epics-base/bin/linux-x86_64/.
• Running antelope --version works, but running e_flex --help produces an error:

·         /home/jonathanhai/epics-base/bin/linux-x86_64/e_flex: unknown flag '-'

2. Checked for lexer.l in seq

• lexer.l is present in /home/jonathanhai/support/seq/src/snc/, but running e_flex fails with:

·         /home/jonathanhai/epics-base/bin/linux-x86_64/e_flex: could not create

• Running e_flex manually gives:

·         /home/jonathanhai/epics-base/bin/linux-x86_64/e_flex: can't open skeleton file DEFAULT_SKELETON_FILE

3. Checked for flex.skl (Skeleton File Required by e_flex)

• Running:

·         find ~/epics-base -name "flex.skl"

returns no results, meaning this file is missing.

• Tried manually downloading flex.skl from https://raw.githubusercontent.com/westes/flex/master/src/flex.skl, but:

·         /home/jonathanhai/epics-base/configure/os/Linux/flex.skl: No such file or directory

4. Installed System flex and bison as an Alternative

• Installed via:

·         sudo apt install flex bison

• flex version: 2.6.4
• bison version: 3.8.2
• Tried running system flex manually:

·         cd ~/support/seq/src/snc

·         flex -o lexer.c lexer.l

• Error:

o    lexer.l:1: premature EOF

5. Rebuilt EPICS Base

• Ran a full rebuild:

·         cd ~/epics-base

·         make clean

·         make

• No change, e_flex still does not work.

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Current Issues & Questions

1. Why is e_flex broken?

• It fails with "unknown flag '-'" when run manually.
• It also reports "can't open skeleton file DEFAULT_SKELETON_FILE" when used.
• Should I be specifying a FLEX_SKEL environment variable?
Why is lexer.l failing with "premature EOF" when running flex?

• Could lexer.l be corrupted or incomplete?
• If so, can I manually download a working version?
Is there a way to bypass e_flex and manually create lexer.c?

• If I download a pre-generated lexer.c, will the build proceed?
Would switching to an older version of seq help?

• If so, which version would you recommend?

I really appreciate any further guidance on this! Thanks again for your time.

 

 

 

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You don't often get email from kasemirk at ornl.gov. Learn why this is important

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When you build epics base, that generates base/bin/…./antelope and e_flex, so basically yacc and (f)lex.

Do you have the base/bin/HOST_ARCH folder on your PATH?

Then it should find those when building the other modules

 

 

---

You don't often get email from kasemirk at ornl.gov. Learn why this is important

Caution: External email.

 

When you build epics base, that generates base/bin/…./antelope and e_flex, so basically yacc and (f)lex.

Do you have the base/bin/HOST_ARCH folder on your PATH?

Then it should find those when building the other modules