Distributed Software Development in the EPICS Collaboration

L.R. Dalesio-LANL, M.R. Kraimer-ANL,
W. Watson-CEBAF, M. Clausen-DESY

The EPICS collaboration now consists of many accelerator, astronomy and particle detector projects. Many of these groups contribute code to the collaboration. The interest of the sponsoring lab is always the primary driver in decisions about developing new code. As a side affect of meeting the needs of a given project, the collaboration receives new developments. This paper will study the overall composition of EPICS with regards to distributed development, the sociological and technical environment in which these developments are made, the problems in distributed software development, and the benefits of developing software at multiple sites.