Building EPICS7 with RTEMS5 by hand

July 28, 2020

CAUTION: The EPICS branch, I will be using in this blog is not an upstream branch, be warned to use it only for experimental purpose.

In the previous blog where I tried to explain how to build a BSP for RTEMS5. This time I will go a step further and will tell you how to build the same for EPICS! But hey, you might be wondering what is EPICS?

What is EPICS?

EPICS offers a collection of software tools for the construction of distributed control systems for experimental physics projects.

EPICS includes a runtime database, robust network protocols, an extensive collection of device drivers for hardware connectivity, and a set of client tools for operator control and monitoring. It also includes data archiving and alarms.

Let’s build!

Prerequisites: Everything will be good to go if you have installed/built pc-386 BSP from this tutorial

Step 1: Download this particular branch of EPICS. This branch is “playground” version of EPICS of my mentor Heinz which has some key components to support RTEMS 5.

Step 2: Get inside the ‘development’ directory as created and discussed in the previous blog and make another directory named EPICS.

mkdir EPICS

Unzip the downloaded Zip file inside this directory.

Step 3: The development directory should look somewhat like this now.

development
|__EPICS
   |__epicsBaseOwnPlayground-3afec267ab08568ea454789e562450b00feea5c0
|__rtems
   |__rtems-5
   |__src
   |   |__rsb
   |__5
   |__kernels-5
      |__pc-386

Step 4: Rename ‘epicsBaseOwnPlayground-3afec267ab08568ea454789e562450b00feea5c0’ to ‘epics-sep’ just for a simpler name. Now cd into ‘epics-sep’

cd epics-sep

Step 5: Open your favourite code editor at this point of the directory as now we have to make few changes in the configuration files of ‘epics-sep’ to build pc-386 BSP.

Step 6: In epics-base/configure/CONFIG_SITE, set:

CROSS_COMPILER_TARGET_ARCHS= RTEMS-pc386

Step 7: Then we have to set in configure/os/CONFIG_SITE.Common.RTEMS,

where to find RTEMS part.

# Where to find RTEMS
#
# APS:
RTEMS_SERIES = 5
RTEMS_VERSION = 5
RTEMS_BASE = /home/mritunjay/development/rtems/$(RTEMS_VERSION)

Please change the RTEMS_BASE according to the location where you have stored it.

Step 8: Save the above changes and run make

make

And there it is! You have built EPICS7 for RTEMS5 for pc-386 successfully!

References:

1. https://epics.mpg.de/index.php