Developer Server Build

It is possible to use one of the checkouts from a build server as the basis of your local development environment.

EPICS

The EPICS clean Windows 10 Jenkins build workspace is copied to \\isis.cclrc.ac.uk\inst$\Kits$\CompGroup\ICP\developer\EPICS\x64 - this contains much more than an instrument installation e.g. it has all the local .git submodules and temporary build (object) files. It can thus be used as the basis for further development work on your local computer.

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.

Getting Files

After running this command, you should have a compiled and ready to use distribution, with git pointing at current commit heads.

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

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-x64.7z from \\isis.cclrc.ac.uk\inst$\Kits$\CompGroup\ICP\developer 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" "." EPICS-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

If you wish to work with a debug build, replace x64 with x64-debug in above commands

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.