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installing.md

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Installing the device support

Installing the MRF device support is pretty simple as it has a very small set of dependencies.

Requirements

  • EPICS Base (3.16 or newer)
  • C++ 11 compliant compiler and standard library

Compiling

Create the file configure/RELEASE.local and add the path to your EPICS Base installation. Example:

EPICS_BASE = /path/to/my/epics/base-7.0.6

Depending on your default compiler options, you might also have to create the file configure/CONFIG_SITE.local and add some compiler flags (to enable C++ 11 support or other features). Example:

USR_CXXFLAGS += -std=c++11
USR_CFLAGS += -std=c99

After this, running make should be sufficient for building the device support. Please note that the support for controlling EVG / EVR devices that are directly installed in the computer running the IOC (e.g. devices for Compact PCI or MicroTCA) is only compiled on Linux as other operating systems are currently not supported for these kind of devices.

When you want to use these devices, you also have to install the Linux kernel module, which can be found in the support directory of the device support.

Choosing the record type for descriptions

There are records that can store a user-defined description for many settings (e.g. for each input, output, pulse generator, prescaler, etc.). At compile time, you can choose the record type used for these records. You have a choice between three types, that can be selected by setting the MRF_DESCRIPTION_RECORD_TYPE variable in configure/CONFIG_SITE.local to the name of the respective record type.

lso

This is the default option and allows using descriptions with up to 255 characters. The downside is that the lso record is only supported by recent releases of EPICS Base and that there is a bug in Autosave that prevents values from being restored correctly unless you apply a patch to Autosave.

The CSS / BOY panels distributed with this device support will work with the lso record type without any modifications.

stringout

The stringout record is supported by all releases of EPICS Base, but description strings are limited to 39 characters when using it.

The CSS / BOY panels distributed with this device support will not work natively with this record type and have to be adjusted. This can be done either by setting the mrf_description_pv_suffix macro to .VAL when opening the main panel or by editing the main panel files (for each of the supported device types) and changing the default value of this macro accordingly.

waveform

The waveform record is a compromise. When using it, you can use up to 255 characters for descriptions, like when using the lso record, but the waveform record should work with all supported releases of EPICS Base. The downside of using the waveform record is that EPICS client tools will not natively recognize that the PV represents a string and that the format in which Autosave stores the data differs from the one used for the stringout and lso records. This means that you will have to manually edit Autosave save files when switching between waveform and one of the other record types.

The CSS / BOY panels distributed with this device support will not work natively with this record type and have to be adjusted. This can be done either by setting the mrf_description_pv_suffix macro to .VAL {"longString":true} when opening the main panel or by editing the main panel files (for each of the supported device types) and changing the default value of this macro accordingly.