Experimental Physics and
Industrial Control System

[email protected] (John R. Winans) · Fri, 26 Apr 1996 09:59:46 -0500

>Can anyone help me with BURT as I am interested in using it.
>
>My understanding is that at least part of it is written in C++ 
>but will not compile with g++ (the g++ compiler falls over).

I am not clear on as to why, but I suspect that this is indeed true.

>What is the latest version of BURT?

I rewrote the entire thing over the last several months.  The new version will
be called casave and carestore.  It is intended that the BURT GUI code be 
updates to work with the new programs (some day) too.  This code is in beta 
test at the APS.  You are free to grab a copy of it if you wish.  It is in the
APS repository under extensions/src/burt2.  I started a set of html docs
at:
	http://www.aps.anl.gov/winans/casr/casr.960325.html

It is not REALLY ready for public consumption.  Comments and fixes are welcome.
This new code is a C-only implementation.  (If you decide to turn off the SDDS
features to build it w/o the SDDS libs, it should work, but I have not tested
it... I suspect the Makefile dependancies on the files that require SDDS will
get in your way, but should be easy to fix by simply removing the source and
.o files from the Makefile.)

The most important note about this new system is that the file format is 
different.  To use your old ascii request files, you gotta change a few 
things.  I suspect that I will be forced to write some type of conversion 
thingy some time... meanwhile 90% of the existing files need little more
than a header and trailer line added.  There should be enough of the ascii 
file format doc finished for you to figure it out.

I suspect that APS is the only place using the SDDS format.  If I am wrong, 
and you are an SDDS user... your existing files will work fine... the only 
notworthy changes are that multi-page files now work and arrays are saved in
seperate files instead of as one giant string value in a single entry.

>Which compiler should we use to compile it?

For the current burt, we have been using the wonderfully overpriced Sun 'CC' 
compiler.  The new casr stuff should build with most ANSI C compilers.  I have 
been using Sun's acc.

>If we haven't got this compiler, can we get the Solaris binary?

I don't know how that works with the shared libraries and all.  I never tried
it... Janet?  what do you think?

>Is there any documentation?

More than a sane human can tolerate... there is a postscript file in the 
www.aps.anl.gov web site somewhere.  Give me an hour to look for it...

...ah here it is (under five levels of irrelevant menus) at:
http://www.aps.anl.gov/asd/controls/epics/EpicsDocumentation/WWWPages/EpicsDocs/ExtensionsManuals/Burt/BurtManual.ps

>Many thanks for any help.

Hope this helps.

--John Winans

Experimental Physics and Industrial Control System

Experimental Physics and
Industrial Control System