Software infrastructure for the Keck II telescope
William Lupton · Proceedings of SPIE, the International Society for Optical Engineering/Proceedings of SPIE · 1995
Many diverse software systems are in use on the Keck I telescope. This is mostly because software standards were low-level (e.g., choice of programming language, computer or operating system) and did not specify use of a particular software environment. Selection of directory structures, messaging systems, tasking environments and support packages was largely left up to individual development groups, although there were some successful instances of group collaborations. For the Keck II telescope, a common set of standards and tools has been agreed on, and the provision and maintenance of these tools is regarded as a group effort. These standards and tools are known as the Keck II Software Infrastructure and include EPICS (Experimental Physics and Industrial Control System), the successful Keck I concept of making all system control available via keyword/value pairs, the Tcl command language, standard logging and error reporting, and common programing standards. This paper discusses some of the successes and failures of the Keck I approach and describes how the Keck II system is evolving from the Keck I system. Some examples of the use of EPICS for telescope control are given, and EPICS as a vehicle for future collaboration is considered.