EPICS Base Release 3.15.0.x

EPICS Base 3.15.0.x releases are not intended for use in production systems.

Changes between 3.14.x and 3.15.0.x

epicsStdioRedirect.h merged into epicsStdio.h

The definitions from the header file epicsStdioRedirect.h have been moved into epicsStdio.h so all calls to printf(), puts() and putchar() in files that include that OSI header will now be subject to stdout redirection. In past releases (3.14.7 and later) it was necessary to request the redirection support by including the epicsStdioRedirect.h header file. The header file is still provided, but now it just includes epicsStdio.h.

Named Soft Events

Soft events can now be given meaningful names instead of just using the numbers 1-255. The EVNT field is now a DBF_STRING. The post_event() API is now deprecated but still works. It should be replaced by code that in advance looks up the EVNTPVT event handle associated with the named event by calling eventNameToHandle(char *), and when that event occurs passes that handle to the new postEvent(EVNTPVT) routine (which may be called from interrupt level). A new iocsh command postEvent name will trigger a named event from the command-line or a startup script (on vxWorks the expression postEvent(eventNameToHandle("name")) must be used instead though).

Parallel Builds

As EPICS sites get computers with more CPUs they report additional bugs in our parallel build rules. Various issues have been fixed by separating out the build rules that generate dependency (.d) files, ensuring that they are constructed at the appropriate time in the build.

These rule changes can cause additional warning messages to appear when building support modules. Where an application provides its own Makefile rules it may now have to add rules to construct an associated dependency file. In many cases though the change needed is just to replace a dependency for a target$(OBJ) with the target$(DEP) so this

    myLib$(OBJ): myLib_lex.c

becomes

    myLib$(DEP): myLib_lex.c

To debug build issues assocated with dependency files, use the command make --debug=m which tells GNUmake to display information about what it is doing during the first pass when it updates its makefiles.

Removed tsDefs.h

The deprecated tsDefs API was provided for 3.13 compatibility only, and has now been removed. Convert any remaining code that used it to call the epicsTime API instead.

Changes to epicsVersion.h

The two macros EPICS_UPDATE_LEVEL and EPICS_CVS_SNAPSHOT have been deleted from the epicsVersion.h file; they were deprecated in R3.14 and can be replaced with EPICS_PATCH_LEVEL and EPICS_DEV_SNAPSHOT respectively.

A new pair of macros has been added to make version number comparisons easier. Code that will not work with a version of Base before 3.15.0 can now be written like this to prevent it from compiling:

#if defined(VERSION_INT) && EPICS_VERSION_INT < VERSION_INT(3,15,0,0)
#  error EPICS Base R3.15.0 or later is required
#endif

Added support for iocLogPrefix

Added a iocLogPrefix command to iocsh. This adds a prefix to all messages from this IOC (or other log client) as they get sent to the iocLogServer. This lets sites use the "fac=<facility>" syntax for displaying the facility, process name etc. in log viewers like the cmlogviewer.