Contact the EPICS core developer team to get some feedbacks on the extension

[vnadot]

During the ICAPECS2021 poster session, a participant adviced me to contact the EPICS core developer team to have some feedback about the extension:

• could I use some files in the epics-base to improve the modules ? (record coverage, syntax coverage, ...)
• features to add between v3.15 and v7 in vscode-epics?
• other points ?
• any feedbacks ?
• any advice ?

Note that I already get all the EPICS fields (see README.md#3-get-all-the-fields-of-the-epics-database)

[vnadot]

Hi @anjohnson @ralphlange, I am taking the liberty of contacting you about vscode-epics. Do you have any comment about this current issue or people I should contact ? Best regards.

[crispd]

I'm not at all a core developer, but I am someone who writes EPICS code for FRIB in Lansing, MI. For what it's worth, I think this is awesome work. It's really neat, and I can't wait to start using it.

[anjohnson]

We have extended the syntax of the IOC's DB and DBD files several time in recent years, probably the largest change was the introduction of JSON (and now JSON-5) syntax for record info-tags and field values, the addition of JSON link types, and support of Perl's POD markup language in DBD files for writing record reference documentation. Read the Release Notes for the main changes where these were described or at least mentioned.

Supporting the JSON/JSON-5 syntax would be an excellent addition if you haven't already added that — I do have your extension installed and I appreciate it for what I've seen it do, but I don't run vscode very often so I'm not sure if JSON support is included yet. The use of the Perl POD markup isn't something many users will have come across or need, but you can see it used on any recent 3.15 branch in the files src/ioc/db/*.dbd.pod and src/std/rec/*.dbd.pod.

I don't really know what else to suggest at the moment — feel free to make announcements to tech-talk when you release additional features though. Thanks for developing this module!

• Andrew