epics-base/documentation/RELEASE-7.0.9.md

Release Notes

This document describes the changes that were included in the release of EPICS noted below. Release entries are now provided in a separate document for each version in the EPICS 7 series, but all are combined into a single page for publishing on the EPICS website. Separate release documents are also included from the older Base 3.15 and 3.16 series.

The external PVA submodules continue to maintain their own release notes files as before, but the entries describing changes in those submodules since version 7.0.5 have been copied into the associated EPICS Release Notes files, and will be added to new EPICS Release Notes published in the future.

EPICS Release 7.0.9

Core documentation published at ReadTheDocs

The documentation directory's Makefile can now run various publication scripts including Sphinx and Doxygen to generate formatted documentation that is now being published at docs.epics-controls.org and integrated into the main EPICS Documentation website. The best place to find out more about these mechanisms is the Contribution Guide although it doesn't currently cover the new processes added to epics-base.

Much of the documentation generated from .dbd.pod files at build time is now also being converted into MarkDown (.md) files and installed into the top-level doc directory. Some users might find it quicker to look up information about a record type by opening these files in a text editor instead of opening a browser and loading the HTML versions or finding and opening the files from the EPICS Documentation site.

Post monitors from compress record when it's reset

Writing into a compress record's RES field now posts a monitor event instead of only changing VAL. Monitor clients will therefore receive an empty array.

The AMSG error message propagates through MSS links

A database link with the MSS attribute will now propagate not only SEVR and STAT, but also AMSG. This field contains additional information that complements STAT. Links with MS or MSI attributes do not propagate STAT, and therefore do not propagate AMSG, either.

Channel Access links do not propagate AMSG, regardless of the MSS attribute, because the message is not available as Channel metadata.

Reloading record aliases

Aliases can now be defined more than once as long as they still refer to the same record, unless the global variable dbRecordsOnceOnly is non-zero. This allows database files to be loaded multiple times, even if they contain alias definitions.

DBE_PROPERTY event rate changed

Updating property fields now only posts DBE_PROPERTY events if the field actually changed.

Changes to msi related to include paths

There are two changes to msi included here.

msi now treats files included by .template or .substutiions files in a more consistent way: for relative paths, it will always look relative to the current working directory if no -I flags are passed, and if they are passed then it will search for the relative path from each of those flags. That is, the following will now find the file bar.template located at /some/path/rel/path/bar.template

$ cat foo.substitutions
file rel/path/bar.template {
 # contents
}
$ msi -I /some/path foo.substitutions

Note that this does provide one change from previous behaviour: when opening a file from the command line, msi will not use the -I-specified paths to search for the file, but will only work relative to the current working directory, consistent with most commandline utilities.

Allow users to delete previously created records from the database

From this release, record instances and aliases that have already been loaded by an IOC can be removed from the database again before the call to iocInit by loading a second instance of the named records but using "#" in place of the record type. Values for the fields are not required or advised, just use an empty record body {}. This is useful when a template defines records that are not wanted in some IOCs, without having to split or duplicate the original template.

For example this will remove the record named "unwanted":

record("#", "unwanted") {}

Only keep readline history for interactive sessions

Previously, all IOCsh commands were persisted in the libreadline history (when readline support is included). Going forward, only interactive commands are saved.

Type change to asTrap serverSpecific data

Change void* to dbChannel* in asTrapWriteBeforeWithData() and asTrapWriteMessage::serverSpecific to reflect the reality since the dbAddr* to dbChannel* migration. External code wishing to support both before and after 3.15 should already be conditionally casting to/from the appropriate type.

Fix issues with _FORTIFY_SOURCE=3

This release fixes the false positives failures when building with _FORTIFY_SOURCE level 3. The override introduced in 7.0.8.1 has been removed.

Other

• genVersionHeader: work with git submodules and worktrees.
• avoid UB with self pthread_join()
• freebsd: Add support for x86 and amd64 builds
• Clear AMSG when SEVR becomes zero.
• seqRecord fix support for link DLY0
• Add ABORT_ON_ASSERT flag to CONFIG_SITE_ENV
• rationalize osdMutex

Submodule updates

The pvDatabase module was updated to version 4.7.2:

• Resolved issue with changed field set in the case where the top level (master) field ("_") is not requested by the client, but the master field callback causes all fields to be marked as updated, rather than only those fields that have actually been modified.