EPICS V4

Development Resources

This page includes references for development with EPICS V4, to produce scientific software services and control systems. It also includes references to EPICS V4 Working Group internal documentation for help with release procedures, documentation generation etc.

Informative Guides

The following are development guides for developers who want to use EPICS V4:

• EPICS V4 download site
• EPICS V4 download site README
• Getting Started with EPICS V4. A first steps guide to getting the code, building it, and references to the basic examples
• Build tracker spreadsheet (Excel). Tabulates what is known about the status of EPICS V4 builds on various architectures and cross-compile targets.
• First steps in troubleshooting EPICS V4. Presently oriented towards service development

Support requests should presently be addressed by email to epics-pvdata-devel@lists.sourceforge.net.

Normative Modules Software and Documentation

Find the documentation of the core modules of EPICS V4 below. Suggested reading list for a programmer new to EPICS V4 is to read the overviews in the order pvData, pvAccess, pvIOC. The overview for pvAccessCPP is not yet available, but the Java implementation is equivalent and the APIs are similar. For pvAccess, in particular see the package description for org.epics.pvaccess.client.

pvData

The description of how memory resident data types are described and defined. Complete implementations are available for both Java and for C++.

Specification: The pvData interface has not yet been specified independently of its implementations, though that is an expected deliverable of the EPICS V4 Working Group

Implementations:

• Java reference implementation. Status: Usable beta

  pvDataJava source code in Mercurial.

  Reference Documentation: Latest, 1.0-BETA Release

  JavaDoc: Latest, 1.0-BETA Release

• C++ reference implementation. Status: Usable beta

  pvDataCPP source code in Mercurial

  Reference Documentation, Latest, 1.0-BETA Release

  Doxygen Latest, 1.0-BETA Release

pvAccess

pvAccess is the network support for EPICS V4. A complete implementation is available for both Java and for C++, although documentation has not been written for the C++ implementation.

Specification: pvAccess Protocol Specification. Status is Second Public Working Draft

Implementations:

• Java reference implementation. Status: Usable beta

  pvAccessJava source code in Mercurial.

  Reference Documentation: Latest, 1.0-BETA Release

  JavaDoc: Latest, 1.0-BETA Release

• C++ reference implementation. Status: Usable beta

  pvAccessCPP source code in Mercurial

  Reference Documentation, Latest (Not yet written), 1.0-BETA Release (not yet written)

  Doxygen Latest, 1.0-BETA Release

pvIOC

The description of an IOC (Input Output Controller) that supports pvData. The Java version has lots of functionality. The C++ version is in the early stages of development.

Specification: pvIOC has not yet been specified independently of its implementations, though that is an expected deliverable of the EPICS V4 Working Group

Implementations:

• Java reference implementation. Status: Usable beta

  pvIOCJava source code in Mercurial.

  Reference Documentation: Latest, 1.0-BETA Release

  JavaDoc: Latest, 1.0-BETA Release

• C++ reference implementation. Status: Usable beta

  pvIOCCPP source code in Mercurial

  Reference Documentation, Latest, 1.0-BETA Release

  Doxygen Latest, 1.0-BETA Release

Internal Development References

The following are development guides and cheatsheets primarily intended for EPICS V4 developers, though these may be useful for user developers who wish to build EPICS V4 from source:

• Eclipse Mercurial integration for developing EPICS V4 with Eclipse
• Mercurial Cheatsheet. A summary of the Mercurial (source code management) system commands useful for doing development of EPICS V4 with its SourceForge hosted repositories
• Cheatsheet for Passwordless SSH Access to SourceForge for EPICS V4 Development
• Doxygen C++ source code documentation generation cheatsheet for EPICS V4 development
• EPICS V4 Versioned Release Guide
• EPICS V4 Sourceforge HgWeb Mercurial Repos (SCM source)
• EPICS V4 Sourceforge Maven repos (CI build products)
• Using Maven to deploy to SourceForge.