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epics-base/documentation/RELEASE-7.0.1.1.md
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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.

EPICS Release 7.0.1.1

Changed SIML failure behavior

A failure when fetching the simulation mode through SIML will not put the record into INVALID alarm state anymore. Instead, as long as the record's current alarm severity (SEVR)is NO_ALARM, its alarm status (STAT) will be set to LINK_ALARM without increasing the severity. This allows clients to get some notification of a failing or bad SIML link without otherwise affecting record processing.

dbVerify() has been restored to dbStaticLib

This routine was removed in Base-3.16.1 but has been reimplemented in this release by special request. Note that the error message strings that it returns when verification fails have changed, but are still designed for display to the user.

Simulation mode improvements

Records that support simulation mode have two new fields, SSCN (Simulation Scan Mode) and SDLY (Simulation Delay). SSCN is a menu field that provides an alternate value for the SCAN field to be used while the record is in simulation mode. This is especially useful for I/O scanned records, for which simulation mode was not working at all. Setting SDLY to a positive value makes the record process asynchronously in simulation mode, with the second stage processing happening after the specified time (in seconds).

Extend the dbServer API with init/run/pause/stop methods

This change permits IOCs to be built that omit the CA server (RSRV) by removing its registrar entry which is now provided in the new rsrv.dbd file. Other server layers can be built into the IOC (alongside RSRV or in place of it) by registering them in a similar manner. The dbServer API is documented with Doxygen comments in the header file.

Specific IOC server layers can be disabled at runtime by adding their name to the environment variable EPICS_IOC_IGNORE_SERVERS (separated by spaces if more than one should be ignored).

Grand source-code reorganization

EPICS 7.0.1 contains the IOC Database, RSRV server and the Channel Access client code from EPICS Base 3.16.1 along with all the original record types and soft device support, but GDD and the Portable Channel Access Server have been unbundled and are now available separately. In their place we have brought in the more recently written EPICS V4 C++ libraries (collectively referred to as the PVA modules). The directory tree for EPICS is somewhat larger as a result, and the original structure of the Base directories has been split into 4 separate Git repositories. External modules should build against this new structure with little or no changes needed, except that some allowance may be needed for the merging of the V4 modules.

There should be rather more description and documentation of these changes than is currently available, but as developers we generally much prefer to write code than documentation. Send questions to the tech-talk mailing list and we'll be happy to try and answer them!