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epics-base/documentation/RELEASE_NOTES.html
2015-07-10 14:02:01 -05:00

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<title>EPICS Base R3.16.0 Release Notes</title>
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<h1 align="center">EPICS Base Release 3.16.0</h1>
<p style="color:red">This version of EPICS Base has not been released yet.</p>
<h2 align="center">Changes between 3.15.x and 3.16.0</h2>
<!-- Insert new items immediately below this template ...
<h3>Title...</h3>
<p>Description</p>
-->
<h3>Generate Version Header</h3>
<p>A Perl script and Makefile rules have been added to allow modules to generate
a C header file with a macro defined with an automatically updated identifier.
This is a VCS revision ID (Darcs, Git, Mercurial Subversion and Bazaar are all
supported) or the date/time of the build if no VCS system is in use.</p>
<p>The makeBaseApp example template has been updated with a new device support
which makes this identifier visible via a lsi (long string input) record.</p>
<h3>epicsTime API return status</h3>
<p>The epicsTime routines that used to return epicsTimeERROR now return a specific
S_time_ status value, allowing the caller to discover the reason for any failure.
The identifier <tt>epicsTimeERROR</tt> is no longer defined, so any references to
it in source code will no longer compile. The identifier epicsTimeOK still exists
and has the value 0 as before, so most code that uses these APIs can be changed in
a way that is backwards-compatible with the previous return status.</p>
<p>Time providers that have to return a status value and still need to be built
with earlier versions of Base can define the necessary status symbols like this:</p>
<blockquote><pre>
#include "epicsTime.h"
#ifndef M_time
/* S_time_... status values were not provided before Base 3.16 */
#define S_time_unsynchronized epicsTimeERROR
#define S_time_...whatever... epicsTimeERROR
#endif
</pre></blockquote>
<h3>Refactoring of epicsReadline</h3>
<p>The epicsReadline code has been reorganized to allow the commandline history
editor to be disabled at runtime. The EPICS_COMMANDLINE_LIBRARY build setting
still selects the preferred editor, but the new <tt>IOCSH_HISTEDIT_DISABLE</tt>
environment variable can be set at runtime to disable history editing and make
the IOC or other program use the basic editor instead. This is useful when
starting and controlling an IOC from another program through its stdin and
stdout streams since history editors often insert invisible escape codes into
the stdout stream, making it hard to parse.</p>
<h3>Callback subsystem API</h3>
<p>Added a new macro <tt>callbackGetPriority(prio, callback)</tt> to the
callback.h header and removed the need for dbScan.c to reach into the internals
of its CALLBACK objects.</p>
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