EPICS AppImage

This project is intended to provide prebuilt EPICS base tools in the form of AppImages for the end-users, for those who usually do not need to have the full EPICS base built. Tools like softIoc, caget, caput, cainfo, camonitor, softIocPVA, pvget, pvput, pvinfo, pvmonitor, etc. could be used in the command line interface. More tools will be included in future releases.

User Guide

Installation

On an x86_64 machine, type in the Terminal with pip install epics-appimage to install the package.

Alternatively, each AppImage can also be downloaded from the release page, chmod +x <AppImage> and run it. If only one AppImage is needed, download epics-base-tools-x86_64.AppImage.

Run

Typical EPICS base tools could be invoked by just typing the name in the Terminal, e.g. softIoc, caget, caput, etc.

One special command called epics-base-tools is built to be used as the entry point for all the packaged tools, all packaged tools are sharing the same libraries, thus this single AppImage is way more compact.

Type epics-base-tools in the Terminal will output the usage message:

Missing the app name!
Usage: epics-base-tools-x86_64.AppImage -i -l -h app-name

Run the deployed EPICS base tools.

Available options:

 -i, --info      EPICS base version
 -l, --list      All available EPICS base tools
 app-name        Name of one of the deployed tools
 -h, --help      Print this help and exit
 -v, --verbose   Print script debug info

Examples:
 # use caget tool
 epics-base-tools-x86_64.AppImage caget
 # create an alias for caget
 alias caget="epics-base-tools-x86_64.AppImage caget"

epics-base-tools softIoc is equivalent as softIoc, the same applies to other tools.

--list or -l option lists all packaged EPICS base tools, e.g.: epics-base-tools -l outputs:

(26) apps are available:

acctst antelope ascheck caConnTest caEventRate caget cainfo camonitor caput caRepeater casw ca_test catime e_flex iocLogServer makeBpt msi p2p pvcall pvget pvinfo pvlist pvmonitor pvput softIoc softIocPVA

Build AppImages from EPICS base

In the Terminal, run: make bootstrap | tee -a log, edit bootstrap.sh as needed.