JACoW is a publisher in Geneva, Switzerland that publishes the proceedings of accelerator conferences held around the world by an international collaboration of editors.
TY - CONF AU - Elson, P.J. AU - Baldi, C. AU - Sinkarenko, I. ED - Furukawa, Kazuro ED - Yan, Yingbing ED - Leng, Yongbin ED - Chen, Zhichu ED - Schaa, Volker R.W. TI - Introducing Python as a Supported Language for Accelerator Controls at CERN J2 - Proc. of ICALEPCS2021, Shanghai, China, 14-22 October 2021 CY - Shanghai, China T2 - International Conference on Accelerator and Large Experimental Physics Control Systems T3 - 18 LA - english AB - In 2019, Python was adopted as an officially supported language for interacting with CERN’s accelerator controls. In practice, this change of status was as much pragmatic as it was progressive - Python has been available as part of the underlying operating system for over a decade and unofficial Python interfaces to controls have existed since at least 2015. So one might ask: what really changed when Python’s adoption became official? This paper will discuss what it takes to officially support Python in a controls environment and will focus on the cultural and technological shifts involved in running Python operationally. It will highlight some of the infrastructure that has been put in place at CERN to facilitate a stable and user-friendly Python platform, as well as some of the key decisions that have led to Python thriving in CERN’s accelerator controls domain. Given its general nature, it is hoped that the approach presented in this paper can serve as a reference for other scientific organisations from a broad range of fields who are considering the adoption of Python in an operational context. PB - JACoW Publishing CP - Geneva, Switzerland SP - 236 EP - 241 KW - controls KW - operation KW - software KW - network KW - GUI DA - 2022/03 PY - 2022 SN - 2226-0358 SN - 978-3-95450-221-9 DO - doi:10.18429/JACoW-ICALEPCS2021-MOPV040 UR - https://jacow.org/icalepcs2021/papers/mopv040.pdf ER -