Experimental Physics and
Industrial Control System

Ned Arnold <[email protected]> · Fri, 03 Feb 2006 14:06:21 -0600

With Marty Kraimer no longer available on a day to day basis, the APS
team had to take a serious look at the EPICS development/support efforts
in which we are involved. Below is a summary of the conclusions reached
from a meeting with APS developers, APS management, Bob Dalesio, and
Marty Kraimer.
Upon review of last year's efforts and accomplishments, we have realized
that EPICS Version 4 is too large of development to successfully
undertake with the part-time resources that can be leveraged from
operating facilities. In addition, the ambitious redesign of major
portions of EPICS core (database, communications API, device support
interface) would be a significant impediment for operating facilities to
migrate to Version 4.
Therefore, under the current EPICS collaborative structure (and funding
model), we have made a decision to focus on small incremental
evolutionary steps (3.15, 3.16, etc) rather than revolutionary leaps.
We will evaluate the desired features of V4 and develop a roadmap for
incorporating some of these features into Version 3. More significant
changes/features will have to wait until new opportunities present
themselves to fund substantial developments (there are a few ideas on
the table, however).
Andrew Johnson has taken over responsibility of "keeper of the source".
His primary emphases will be reliability, maintainability and
establishing a well-defined forward migration path for existing
applications as new features are added. Some features already identified
for possible incorporation into 3.x include enhancement of the build
system; unbundling BASE into Core, Channel Access, and IOC; variable
length strings; etc. Because of our limited resources, we will be
looking for significant assistance in developing these features (i.e.
the timeline for delivery is directly proportional to available resources).
Some V4 research and development will continue, but not led or
coordinated by Argonne. One effort will include investigation of
hierarchical records, "devices", and emerging protocols. An initial
implementation of some of these ideas will be in a Java IOC (Marty
Kraimer is working on this development). Another emerging development
effort is the Control System Studio (a.k.a EPICS Office) and IOC
redundancy driven by DESY. Any successes in these areas will be
considered for integration somewhere in the future. Contact Bob Dalesio
or Matthias Clausen if you are interested in these activities.

 Ned Arnold (for The APS Team)

Experimental Physics and Industrial Control System

Experimental Physics and
Industrial Control System