The epics-containers GitHub organization holds a collection of tools and documentation for building, deploying and managing containerized EPICS IOCs.

Quick Start

See Essential Concepts and the Getting Started Guide

Useful Links

Item	Link
Documentation	https://epics-containers.github.io
Wiki	epics-containers/epics-containers.github.io
Issues	epics-containers/epics-containers.github.io#issues
Docs Source	epics-containers/epics-containers.github.io
Organization	epics-containers

Update for April 2024 - version 3.4.0

We have just completed another major overhaul of the epics-containers framework. The primary goal of these changes was to add in support for RTEMS based “hard” IOCs. But we have also taken the opportunity to make some other improvements.

“Hard” IOC support is currently limited to the VME5500 processor card running RTEMS 5. However this is a proof of principle for an approach that could be extended to any other type of IOC that cannot run inside of a container. In brief:

• At container build time the IOC binary is cross compiled.

• The developer image is kept (in container registry) as an archive of the sources that built the binary

• The runtime image holds the binary only and is based on a ‘proxy’ image

• At runtime, the proxy container places the binaries in a location accessible to the hard IOC

• The proxy container connects to the ‘hard’ IOC console and may change config to point the bootloader at the new binaries

• The proxy container reboots the ‘hard’ IOC

• The proxy container attaches the IOC console to its stdout/stdin

• Now the proxy container can be managed/logged/monitored exactly like a linux IOC

• We have demonstrated using this approach to locally build and test an RTEMS IOC from a workstation using a vscode developer container.

The tutorials are now up to date with these latest changes, although the RTEMS tutorials are still in development.

From this release onwards changes will be done in a controlled manner described in the page Change Management Manifesto.

Update for February 2024

The tutorials have now been updated. Recent changes include:

• epics-containers-cli has been renamed to edge-containers-cli. It now supports the deployment of general services as well as IOCs. It still has the entrypoint ec but the namespace ioc has been dropped and its functions are now in the root (e.g. ec ioc deploy is now ec deploy).

• Improved CI for ec-services repositorys and generic IOCs repos.

• copier template based creation of new beamline, accelerator and generic IOC repos.

  • This provides greatly improved ability to adopt updates to the template into your own repositories.

All tutorials are now up to date with the latest workflow. The exception is tutorials for the RTEMS platform which are now in active development.

Materials

• Oxfordshire EPICS Meeting Nov 2023

• ICALEPCS 2021 Paper: Kubernetes for EPICS IOCs

• ICALEPCS 2021 Talk: Kubernetes for EPICS IOCs

Communication

If you are interested in discussing containers for control systems, please:

• Add a brief description of your project and the status of it’s use of containers to:

  • The epics-containers Wiki

• Join in the discussion at:

  • epics-containers.github.io discussions

How the documentation is structured

Documentation is split into four categories, also accessible from links in the top bar.

• Tutorials
  • Tutorials Introduction
  • Set up a Developer Workstation
  • Create a Beamline Repository
  • Deploying and Managing IOC Instances
  • Create an IOC Instance
  • Developer Containers
  • Changing the IOC Instance
  • Changing a Generic IOC
  • Create a Generic IOC
  • Wrapping Up
  • Debugging Generic IOC Builds
  • Working with Support Modules
  • Setup a Kubernetes Server
  • Create a New Kubernetes Beamline
  • Review the New Beamline Repository
  • Create a Test IOC to Deploy
  • RTEMS - Creating a File Server
  • RTEMS - Deploying an Example IOC

Tutorials for installation and typical usage. New users start here.

• How-to Guides
  • Builder2ibek Conversion Tool
  • Builder2ibek.support Conversion Tool
  • Contributing to the project
  • Updating User Repositories with Copier
  • Debug an IOC instance locally
  • Updating and Testing ibek-support
  • Choose Your Developer Environment
  • Viewing Operator Interfaces with Phoebus
  • Kubernetes Additional How To’s

Practical step-by-step guides for the more experienced user.

• Explanations
  • Change Management Manifesto
  • Architectural Decision Records
  • About the documentation
  • Essential Concepts
  • Dev Container vs Runtime Container
  • Kubernetes Cluster Config
  • Channel Access and Other Protocols
  • Source and Registry Locations

Explanations of how it works and why it works that way.

• Reference
  • Change Log
  • Command Line Interface for IOC Management
  • Configuration for epics-containers
  • Working with Docker
  • The Environment Configuration File
  • Frequently Asked Questions
  • Glossary
  • IOC Helm Chart Details
  • Kubernetes Resources in an IOC Instance
  • Troubleshooting
  • Recommended VSCode Settings
  • Index
  • Release Notes

Technical reference material including APIs and release notes.