Experimental Physics and
Industrial Control System

Andrew Johnson <[email protected]> · Fri, 19 Apr 2013 10:45:52 -0500

Hi Michael,

On 2013-04-19 [email protected] wrote:
> I've just discovered that calling ca_context_create(1) after iocInit()
> appears to succeed (it returns ECA_NORMAL) ... but the resulting context
> is not very healthy!  In my particular case I find that
> ca_array_get_callback delivers zero length data, but I expect other deeper
> problems are to be found.

Is your code running in the main thread, or its own private thread?  If this 
is a private thread then Mark's comment applies — you must ensure that the 
thread does not call any other CA functions before ca_context_create() is run.  
If this code is running in the IOC's main thread then that's a different 
issue; I'm not sure what context the main IOC thread belongs to, if any, but 
you probably can't assume that code running after iocInit is the first routine 
to create a CA context for the main thread.

> I understand that I need to call ca_context_create() a good deal earlier,
> but I don't really understand why it appears to succeed -- is it possible
> for an error code to be returned instead, please?  (In some future version
> of EPICS, I'm testing this on 3.14.11.)

It does return a status, but it is not a failure to have multiple contexts 
running in a process at the same time.  I'm guessing that the API can't 
distinguish your case from a more advanced user, so it's quite happy to do 
what you asked.

> Alternatively, is there some reliable way I can test whether it has
> succeeded?  I don't have full control over when my library is initialised,
> so detecting an error immediately would be more friendly to the user.

You can use ca_current_context() to find out if there is context set for the 
current thread yet.  This returns a NULL pointer if no context has been 
created yet.  If the result is not NULL you may be able to use the 
undocumented (and mis-spelled) routine (with a prototype in cadef.h)
    int ca_preemtive_callback_is_enabled(void);
to find out whether that context is preemptive or not.

HTH,

- Andrew
-- 
It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary
depends upon his not understanding it. -- Upton Sinclair

Experimental Physics and Industrial Control System

Experimental Physics and
Industrial Control System