pydrama

This extension module provides a Python3 interface to AAO's DRAMA communication framework, using Cython to wrap the C library.

Dependencies

• /local/python3 -- Python3 install containing bin/, lib/ directories
• /local/python3/bin/cython -- >= v0.29.1
• /local/python3/lib/python3.7/site-packages/numpy -- >= v1.15.4
• /local/python3/lib/python3.7/site-packages/jac_sw -- from pyuae
• /jac_sw/epics/CurrentRelease -- EPICS R3.13.8 with UAE extensions
• /jac_sw/drama/CurrentRelease -- DRAMA v1.6.3
• /jac_sw/itsroot/install/common -- for Jit library

Installation

Create or copy a config/CONFIG.Defs file. Example:

APPLIC_BASE=/jac_sw/epics/CurrentRelease
APPLIC_CONFIG=/jac_sw/epics/CurrentRelease/config
APPLIC_DEPENDS=/jac_sw/drama/CurrentRelease /jac_sw/itsroot/install/common
APPLIC_INSTALL=/jac_sw/itsroot/install
APPLIC_SUBDIR_FILE=Makefile.Dirs
APPLIC_TARGETS=
APPLIC_TEMPLATES=/jac_sw/epics/CurrentRelease/templates/uae
APPLIC_VERSION=pydrama_0p3_b64

Then

$ make

This example installs to /jac_sw/itsroot/install/pydrama_0p3_b64. For other scripts to be able to find pydrama using the jac_sw module, you'll also need to create a softlink in the install directory:

$ cd /jac_sw/itsroot/install
$ ln -s pydrama_0p3_b64 pydrama

Documentation

HTML documentation can be generated using the scripts in the doc/ directory:

$ doc/pydoc.sh

Examples

Example task scripts can be found in the test/ directory.

Notes

This module uses SDS only as a serialization method, and provides no direct access to, or updates of, SDS structures held in memory. Users deal directly with basic Python objects (dicts, lists, numpy arrays), but some extra computation time and memory is needed when sending or receiving messages. Keep this in mind especially when publishing or monitoring very large data structures.

The argument structure of a get() reply is slightly different from that of a monitor() update. For a get(), msg.arg = {'PARAM':value}, while on a MON_CHANGED trigger, msg.arg = value. Run the get.py and mon.py examples with no arguments to see the difference on the TIME parameter.