Experimental Physics and
Industrial Control System

Andrew Johnson <[email protected]> · Tue, 19 Sep 2017 13:00:00 -0500

Hi Michael,

On 09/19/2017 04:34 AM, [email protected] wrote:

> I have just discovered that the dbVerify function has been removed from
> EPICS 3.16.  I use the functionality provided by this function to
> validate databases as they are statically constructed (in iocbuilder
> and epicsdbbuilder).  At present DLS is still using EPICS 3.14, so I am
> only learning about this from external reports.

I don't recognize a program named dbVerify; there was a tool called
dbReadTest which came with 3.14 and matches the functionality you're
describing. However it relied on the dbStaticHost library, the
functionality for which was deleted in 3.15 (this was originally
provided for use by dbExpand and various database design tools, and
stored all field value data as strings).

> Has this functionality been replaced by anything equivalent?  The
> ability to statically validate assignments to database fields is very
> useful, it substantially increases my confidence that the generated
> database will actually load!

We don't provide a replacement for dbReadTest at the moment. The DBD
file parsing functionality (used at build-time for converting .dbd files
into .h files) was converted into Perl modules and scripts, but there
wasn't an urgent need for parsing DB files so Perl scripts for that
haven't been included (I have some, but IIRC they can't yet parse the
new JSON field data that was added for Base-3.16.1).

You should be able to use the 3.14 version of dbReadTest with 3.15.4
IOCs but in 3.15.5 we changed the promptgroup values, so that doesn't
work any more now.

It may be possible to create another program like dbReadTest by
bastardizing the softMain.c that is part of the softIoc, but it would
have to dynamically create its own registerRecordDeviceDriver data from
the IOC's DBD file (that data is normally compiled into the IOC), and
that won't be trivial to do.

Evidently I need to finish off my Perl DB parser, but I don't think that
will make the upcoming EPICS-7 release.

- Andrew

-- 
Arguing for surveillance because you have nothing to hide is no
different than making the claim, "I don't care about freedom of
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Experimental Physics and Industrial Control System

Experimental Physics and
Industrial Control System