ICALEPCS2011 - List of Authors (Nguyen Xuan, J.)

Paper

Title

Page

A C/C++ Build System Based on Maven for the LHC Controls System

848

J. Nguyen Xuan, B. Copy, M. Dönszelmann
CERN, Geneva, Switzerland

The CERN accelerator controls system, mainly written in Java and C/C++, consists nowadays of 50 projects and 150 active developers. The controls group has decided to unify the development process and standards (e.g. project layout) using Apache Maven and Sonatype Nexus. Maven is the de-facto build tool for Java, it deals with versioning and dependency management, whereas Nexus is a repository manager. C/C++ developers were struggling to keep their dependencies on other CERN projects, as no versioning was applied, the libraries have to be compiled and available for several platforms and architectures, and finally there was no dependency management mechanism. This results in very complex Makefiles which were difficult to maintain. Even if Maven is primarily designed for Java, a plugin (Maven NAR [1]) adapts the build process for native programming languages for different operating systems and platforms. However C/C++ developers were not keen to abandon their current Makefiles. Hence our approach was to combine the best of the two worlds: NAR/Nexus and Makefiles. Maven NAR manages the dependencies, the versioning and creates a file with the linker and compiler options to include the dependencies. The Makefiles carry the build process to generate the binaries. Finally the resulting artifacts (binaries, header files, metadata) are versioned and stored in a central Nexus repository. Early experiments were conducted in the scope of the controls group's Testbed. Some existing projects have been successfully converted to this solution and some starting projects use this implementation.
[1] http://cern.ch/jnguyenx/MavenNAR.html

Poster WEPKS026 [0.518 MB]

WEPMS003

A Testbed for Validating the LHC Controls System Core Before Deployment

977

J. Nguyen Xuan, V. Baggiolini
CERN, Geneva, Switzerland

Since the start-up of the LHC, it is crucial to carefully test core controls components before deploying them operationally. The Testbed of the CERN accelerator controls group was developed for this purpose. It contains different hardware (PPC, i386) running different operating systems (Linux and LynxOS) and core software components running on front-ends, communication middleware and client libraries. The Testbed first executes integration tests to verify that the components delivered by individual teams interoperate, and then system tests, which verify high-level, end-user functionality. It also verifies that different versions of components are compatible, which is vital, because not all parts of the operational LHC control system can be upgraded simultaneously. In addition, the Testbed can be used for performance and stress tests. Internally, the Testbed is driven by Bamboo, a Continuous Integration server, which builds and deploys automatically new software versions into the Testbed environment and executes the tests continuously to prevent from software regression. Whenever a test fails, an e-mail is sent to the appropriate persons. The Testbed is part of the official controls development process wherein new releases of the controls system have to be validated before being deployed operationally. Integration and system tests are an important complement to the unit tests previously executed in the teams. The Testbed has already caught several bugs that were not discovered by the unit tests of the individual components.
* http://cern.ch/jnguyenx/ControlsTestBed.html

Poster WEPMS003 [0.111 MB]

Paper	Title	Page
WEPKS026	A C/C++ Build System Based on Maven for the LHC Controls System	848
	J. Nguyen Xuan, B. Copy, M. Dönszelmann CERN, Geneva, Switzerland
	The CERN accelerator controls system, mainly written in Java and C/C++, consists nowadays of 50 projects and 150 active developers. The controls group has decided to unify the development process and standards (e.g. project layout) using Apache Maven and Sonatype Nexus. Maven is the de-facto build tool for Java, it deals with versioning and dependency management, whereas Nexus is a repository manager. C/C++ developers were struggling to keep their dependencies on other CERN projects, as no versioning was applied, the libraries have to be compiled and available for several platforms and architectures, and finally there was no dependency management mechanism. This results in very complex Makefiles which were difficult to maintain. Even if Maven is primarily designed for Java, a plugin (Maven NAR [1]) adapts the build process for native programming languages for different operating systems and platforms. However C/C++ developers were not keen to abandon their current Makefiles. Hence our approach was to combine the best of the two worlds: NAR/Nexus and Makefiles. Maven NAR manages the dependencies, the versioning and creates a file with the linker and compiler options to include the dependencies. The Makefiles carry the build process to generate the binaries. Finally the resulting artifacts (binaries, header files, metadata) are versioned and stored in a central Nexus repository. Early experiments were conducted in the scope of the controls group's Testbed. Some existing projects have been successfully converted to this solution and some starting projects use this implementation. [1] http://cern.ch/jnguyenx/MavenNAR.html
	Poster WEPKS026 [0.518 MB]

WEPMS003	A Testbed for Validating the LHC Controls System Core Before Deployment	977
	J. Nguyen Xuan, V. Baggiolini CERN, Geneva, Switzerland
	Since the start-up of the LHC, it is crucial to carefully test core controls components before deploying them operationally. The Testbed of the CERN accelerator controls group was developed for this purpose. It contains different hardware (PPC, i386) running different operating systems (Linux and LynxOS) and core software components running on front-ends, communication middleware and client libraries. The Testbed first executes integration tests to verify that the components delivered by individual teams interoperate, and then system tests, which verify high-level, end-user functionality. It also verifies that different versions of components are compatible, which is vital, because not all parts of the operational LHC control system can be upgraded simultaneously. In addition, the Testbed can be used for performance and stress tests. Internally, the Testbed is driven by Bamboo, a Continuous Integration server, which builds and deploys automatically new software versions into the Testbed environment and executes the tests continuously to prevent from software regression. Whenever a test fails, an e-mail is sent to the appropriate persons. The Testbed is part of the official controls development process wherein new releases of the controls system have to be validated before being deployed operationally. Integration and system tests are an important complement to the unit tests previously executed in the teams. The Testbed has already caught several bugs that were not discovered by the unit tests of the individual components. * http://cern.ch/jnguyenx/ControlsTestBed.html
	Poster WEPMS003 [0.111 MB]