EPICS V4

Working Group

This is the group home page of the EPICS v4 Working Group. The EPICS v4 working group is a collaborative effort of members invited by Brookhaven Lab, to bring EPICS v4 to its full potential.

The adminstrative process, and formal workflow of the working group are defined in the EPICS Version 4 Process document. BNL and PSI support is subject to the EPICS v4 Charter, which defines scope and deliverables.

EPICS v4 is a set of computer communications protocols, and a software framework, for high performance distributed control, message passing, and high level software services, as may be used in large scientific instruments and industrial plants. EPICS v4 was previously called "PvData", hence the name of the sourceforge project.

Working Group Activities

Present Work

As of Status 19-Apr-2012. Work is now concentrating on simplifying EPICS V4 for the user programmer, regularizing APIs, and interoperable types. Specifically:

1. The pvAccess Protocol Specification is being published at Second Public Working Draft after successful expert review. It appears to be ready for independent implementation
2. Work to allow V4-V3 interoperability without modification to V3 IOCs, is in final stages
3. A setpoint save and restore tool (server and client) have been completed (BNL)
4. A production level relation database service has been deployed (PSI) (based on the rdbService example)
5. An EPICS V4 based EPICS Archiver service and client have been developed. This allows easy (command line) access to archive data (Diamond).
6. A nominal architecture for production level EPICS V4 institutional installation, has been developed and implemented at PSI, and published as a guide for other institutions
7. Direct support for unsigned integer data type, has recently been completed for Java bindings, and is being worked on for C++ bindings of EPICS V4
8. Improvements are being made to the primary client-server data acquisition API to make it more efficient and intuitive (moving Field name from a property of the Field to a property of the field's parent, brings it in line with existing introspection API norms
9. An easy to use API, EasyPVA, is at alpha and being reviewed
10. "Gather Service," a service platform for helping a programmer to acquire data from many V3 PVs in a service, and supply them as a single record to a V4 client, is at alpha and being tested
11. A BPM orbit service, based on Gather, is being developed (PSI)
12. "Normative Types", a normative document which defines interoperable application level data types, is approaching First Public Working Draft. Requires expert review first. The way these types self-identify is being worked on
13. Work is just beginning on a general purpose EPICS V4 Directory Service (HZB)
14. A general purpose command line tool, "eget" is being developed
15. Downloaders are beginning to compile and install EPICS V4 IOC on VxWorks, Windows and RTEMS. It now compiles in VxWorks 6.0, while v5 is in work in progress. EPICS V4 has recently been compiled in MS Windows, and being tested now
16. An accelerator model service is about to be started

Meetings

Sep 2011

7-Sep-2011: Agenda, Minutes; 14-Sep-2011: Agenda, Chat, Minutes (PDF), 22-Sep-2011: Agenda, Minutes; Material: GatherOverview.doc, 28-Sep-2011: Agenda, Chat, Minutes (PDF),

Oct 2011

Oct 2011 Workshop 3-4 Oct-2011 PSI: DAY 1 Agenda topics; Greg's Report on impressions of EPICS V4 development, and Marty's hot topic list, Agenda and Minutes; DAY 2; Agenda and Minutes, Outcome: Draft of Normative Types. 19-Oct-2011: Agenda, Minutes. 26-Oct-2011: Agenda, Minutes.

Nov 2011

2-Nov-2011: Agenda, Minutes; 9-Nov-2011: Agenda, Minutes; 23-Nov-2011: Agenda, Minutes; 30-Nov-2011: Agenda, Minutes.

Dec 2011

7-Dec-2011: Agenda, Minutes; 14-Dec-2012: Agenda, Minutes; 21-Dec-2012: Agenda, Minutes.

Jan 2012

4-Jan-2012: Agenda, Minutes; 11-Jan-2012: Agenda, Minutes: Jan 2012 Workshop 23-25 Jan-2012 BNL: Agenda; Day 1 Minutes; Day 2 Minutes; Day 3 Minutes

Feb 2012

8-Feb-2012: Agenda, Minutes; 15-Feb-2012: Agenda, Minutes; 22-Feb-2012: Agenda, Minutes; 29-Feb-2012: Agenda, Minutes.

Mar 2012

14-Mar-2012: Agenda, Minutes; 21-Mar-2012: Agenda, Minutes; 28-Mar-2012: Agenda, Minutes.

Apr 2012

4-Apr-2012: Agenda, Minutes; 11-Apr-2012: Agenda, Minutes; Apr 2012 Workshop 23-24 Apr-2012 SLAC: Agenda; Day 1 Minutes; Day 2 Minutes.

May 2012

9-May-2012: Agenda and Minutes.

Meeting Information

Weekly Telecon:

Time: During observance of summer time: UTC (GMT) Wednesdays, 14:00; Outside observance of summer time: UTC (GMT) Wednesdays, 15:00. This puts the meeting at the following local times:

• Zürich (Switzerland) Wednesdays, 16:00:00 local time
• New York (U.S.A. - New York) Wednesdays, 10:00:00 local time
• Oxford (United Kingdom - England) Wednesdays, 15:00:00 local time
• San Francisco (U.S.A. - California) Wednesdays, 07:00:00 local time
• Ljubljana (Slovenia) Wednesdays 16:00:00 local time
• Berlin (Germany - Berlin) Wednesdays, 16:00:00 local time

Since the US and Europe switch observance at different times, there is a shaky week each November and March where things get outa whack.

Meetings from 9-Nov-2011 are held in Skype, using a group conversation initiated by a chair.

You will need:

• Skype version 5.0 at minimum. Versions < 5 don't support group calls properly, in particular joining a call in progress is problematic
• A headset with microphone
• A webcam if you like to send video

Minutes are recorded in Titanpad at http://epicsv4.titanpad.com/

Meeting Minutes Standard

We record the minutes of the weekly telecon as a reference for people assigned action items, so they know the context of the required work, and for people outside the Working Group to see the bogus logic we used to reach conclusions.

• Minutes should include every (relevant) thought expressed in the meeting. The scribe should be madly trying to keep up during the whole meeting. It is reasonable to ask for a pause for catchup. The objective is to indicate why we reached a conclusion, as well as what it was
• Scribe is absolutely justified in asking for clarification at any time
• Top of the minutes MUST include list of attendees, prefixed "PRESENT:", and the minute taker's id, prefixed "SCRIBE:", so that an automatic minute processor can remove the prefix of the minute taker from the published minutes. The chair will do a roll-call and do the PRESENT and SCRIBE entries
• When the subject of the meeting changes, mark with the words "NEW TOPIC:"
• Action Items MUST be prefixed "AI...:" or "ACTION:", and should include a person on which the action is assigned, and a due date. The form should be like "AI on Greg by 1/12: ..."
• Specific decisions of the meeting MUST be prefixed "RESOLUTION:". The resolution must be fully described in the minutes, during the meeting. If the scribe isn't clear on the resolution, ask for clarification
• Problematic areas of EPICS V4 should be prefixed "ISSUE:", and be described as completely as possible in the minutes, during the meeting.

Membership

The EPICS v4 Working group presently has the following members:

Technical Admin

The following items are related to the administration of the WG resources from a technical perspective.

• The sourceforge service shell; the gateway to managing stuff in sf
• Sourceforge Mercurial repo management
• Doxygen Primer