Developer Server Build - ISISComputingGroup/ibex_developers_manual GitHub Wiki

It is possible to use one of the intermediate outputs from a build server as the basis of your local development environment. This can provide you with either a normal Release build (EPICS_HOST_ARCH=windows-x64), or a Debug build (EPICS_HOST_ARCH=windows-x64-debug) or a different architecture such as 32bit (EPICS_HOST_ARCH=win32-x86)

EPICS

You need to be using a Visual Studio compatible with the build server, currently Visual Studio 2022

Tip

Quick Instructions

Run install_developer_build.bat in either \\isis.cclrc.ac.uk\inst$\Kits$\CompGroup\ICP\developer\EPICS (for 64bit builds, what you usually need) or \\isis.cclrc.ac.uk\inst$\Kits$\CompGroup\ICP\developer\EPICS32 (for 32 bit builds, only if you have to build/test a specific driver needing 32bit versions). It will prompt you to choose from normal/debug/static - in most cases normal is what you want and is what is deployed to an instrument, static and debug are for special cases/testing

Note

if you just want a recent EPICS build to run somewhere and do not need to be able to develop using it, you just need to run the install_to_inst.bat in the appropriate build on kits$ when connected from the machine you want to install it on

Details (not normally needed)

If you wish to use a debug build, replace x64 in paths below with x64-debug

The EPICS clean Windows 10 Jenkins build workspace is copied to \\isis.cclrc.ac.uk\inst$\Kits$\CompGroup\ICP\developer\EPICS - this contains much more than an instrument installation e.g. it has all the local .git submodules and *.lib link libraries as well as temporary build (O.*) object file directories. It can thus be used as the basis for rapid further development work on your local computer. A standard instrument debug install for example would allow you to run an ioc in debug mode, but any further development would require re-generating the relevant *.lib files need to link the IOC and so take longer than using a developer debug build.

CAUTION: updating an existing C:\Instrument\Apps\EPICS by the mechanism described here is the equivalent of deleting the directory, a full new git clone --recursive and then a build. You will lose all current changes to files and also any local git branches you created in that directory. Any changes there you want to keep you must push to Github and then re-checkout the branch after the update. Stashing changes to files is not enough as the local git repos are replaced - you need to push remotely.

you would need to find an appropriate build number in \\isis.cclrc.ac.uk\inst$\Kits$\CompGroup\ICP\developer\EPICS\windows-x64 and then run e.g.

robocopy \\isis.cclrc.ac.uk\inst$\Kits$\CompGroup\ICP\developer\EPICS\windows-x64\BUILD-1 c:\Instrument\Apps\EPICS -MIR -NFL -NDL -NP -R:1 -MT -LOG:NUL

As an extra check you can re-run the robocopy without the LOG option. This should not take too long and should not print any errors or have any entries in the Mismatch/FAILED/Extras columns displayed at the end.

you should have a compiled and ready to use distribution, with git pointing at current commit heads. This may take a while to complete - at least 10 minutes, but longer if your disk is not an SSD for example.

Alternative for slow network connection

You can instead copy EPICS-windows-x64.7z from \\isis.cclrc.ac.uk\inst$\Kits$\CompGroup\ICP\developer\zips and unpack this locally using the 7-zip program. Either drag the file using windows explorer, or if you have a very slow connection or one that might get interrupted you can try using robocopy in restartable mode. Open a cmd prompt, change to the relevant directory and type:

robocopy "\\isis.cclrc.ac.uk\inst$\Kits$\CompGroup\ICP\developer\zips" "." EPICS-windows-x64.7z /J /Z

Note that this pre-allocates the full file space before starting the copy. I found that if I interrupt the copy with Ctrl-C and then type the command again, it picks up where it left off, so it looks hopeful it will handle network connection breaks.

Using Files

After copying note that all submodules will be on a detached HEAD.

If you wanted to temporarily use an updated distribution for e.g. a review then you can:

  • rename current c:\Instrument\Apps\EPICS to c:\Instrument\Apps\EPICS-keep
  • use one of the above procedures to create a new c:\Instrument\Apps\EPICS
  • checkout branches required for review, run make in just these directories if required
  • when done delete c:\Instrument\Apps\EPICS and rename EPICS-keep back to EPICS

This scheme works as Visual Studio is binary compatible (even at object file level) from version 2015 onwards. Linking must be done with the most recent visual studio version used, the build server is currently running 2019, so any developer must also be using Visual Studio 2019.

NOTES

We now copy CMakeCache.txt across, if we later again have different developer and build server versions of visual studio then we will again need to not copy it as it is invalid if the visual studio version number is different (2017 v 2019).

CMake is used in a few third party modules e.g. MySQL, gsl, OpenCV. Compatible binaries for these will always be copied across, so IOCs can be compiled and linked, but if CMakeCache.txt is missing a make in the top level will rebuild these modules, some of which do take a while.

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