CDEV 1.7 Release Notes


1.

Overview
The CDEV (control device) C++ library is designed to provide a standard application programming interface (API) to one or more underlying packages, typically control system interfaces. The implementation is in 2 layers: the uppermost layer is used directly by an application, and provides an abstraction of the underlying package as well as many general purpose features. The second layer (service layer) provides the interface to one or more underlying packages, and is implemented as loadable libraries.

CDEV was initially developed at Jefferson Lab with input from the EPICS collaboration, and is now available for anyone to take and use or improve. We welcome all comments, suggestions, bug reports, and bug fixes, including fixes for new platforms. There are many planned enhancements, and would welcome volunteers to contribute to this project. See below for a summary of new and planned features.

You may join a CDEV discussion list by sending the message

Subscribe CDEV

to the address mailserv@jlab.org. (Send the message HELP to the same address for information on how to use the mail server.) The CDEV web page is

http://www.jlab.org/cdev/

CDEV 1.7 is the eighth publicly released version of CDEV.


2.

Changes and Notes
The source modifications in this newest version of CDEV are far too numerous to describe in detail. Version 1.7 of CDEV has been modified to be completely ANSI C++ compliant and to provide greater ease of porting to other platforms. In the past, time constraints have prevented us from tracking down and eliminating the minor warnings that were generated by various compilers. We have spent significant time during the production of this version to eliminate as many of these warnings as possible.

The CDEV distribution is provided in two parts: core and extensions. The core section contains the classes that are fundamental to CDEV and the extensions section contains class libraries and applications that simplify the creation of client/server CDEV applications. The interfaces and protocols of both of these class libraries have remained substantially unmodified during the production of this version, and applications developed for CDEV 1.6 and higher should compile without change.

The most significant addition to this version of CDEV is support for the Windows NT platform. The core libraries., channel access service and cdevGenericServer library have all been ported and tested against Windows NT. A substantial number of new test applications have been generated and the example codes have been compiled and tested extensively.

As always, unforeseen errors will occur in the distribution of a new version. Please notify me by e-mail (akers@jlab.org) if you encounter a problem while installing this version.