Core Minutes 8/24/2004  

Present:    Joanne Bogart, Toby Burnett,  Jim Chiang, Seth Digel, Richard Dubois, Warren Focke,  Riccardo Giannitrapani, Berrie Giebels, Navid Golpayegani, Traudl Hansl-Kozanecka, Heather Kelly, Matt Langston, Michael Kuss, Pat Nolan, Chuck Patterson, James Peachey, Dirk Petry, Leon Rochester,  Tom Stephens, Tracy Usher

• Announcements: (Richard) He will be attending the DPF meeting in Riverside Thursday-Tuesday, giving a talk on GLAST status on Tuesday.
• Science Tools Core: (Jim) His write-up speaks to several issues of naming and organization. There was plenty to discuss [most of which I missed. ed.]
  • Jim asked that we find a way to fix up the setting of the user and system paths in the CMT requirements files for the parameter files.  He demonstrated how the resulting environment variables do not get set absolutely correctly. Traudl remarked that paths starting /a/sulky/.. (rather than /nfs/farm...)  were probably due to Jim's use of v1r14. This has been fixed in later versions of CMT.
  • Toby asked Traudl why the InstallArea appears in the path for pfiles.  Traudl responded that InstallArea will always appear by default but we can switch it off per entry in CMTPATH.
  • James Peachey went on to explain the purpose of the user and system paths for the parameter files.  The user path is there to retain the values used for the last run.  One should also note that if the modification time of the system version is more recent, then the contents of the system version of the parameters will clobber anything defined in the user area.  This can happen when one installs a new version of the code and your user area points to older files.
  • In response to Jim's request that PIL be distributed with readline, Heather asked if we knew how to get a PIL build with readline.  James Peachey responded that by default PIL builds with readline on - he was surprised that it was not there now.  This will be fixed when James supplies a new version of PIL in the next few weeks.
  • Then a little discussion of ScienceTool naming convention.. where the original suggestion was st_*.. sounds like we will stick with that. James prefers to stay away from mixed case in many circumstances, but especially for executables.
  • There was some discussion of how to regulate what goes in the proposed st_facilities package. Richard suggests package owner; Toby pointed out GR facilities doesn't really have an owner; perhaps for st_facilities it should be the architect.
  • James pointed out that, in selecting some names, we need to consider which packages, such as EventBin, are sufficiently generic to be used for data other than GLAST data, and choose names with that in mind.
  • Richard remarked that, if names are to be changed within ScienceTools, the time to do it is NOW.
• Install area: (Traudl) See her presentation. Earlier documents were updated to reflect the present status: Report Feb 2004  and Migration Plan. Improvements include the simplification of the install of public header files and the addition of the install of scripts. An example showing all cases of data files is available on CVS, pkg examples/exInst. [The first real life example (AcdRecon) was committed to CVS post-meeting.]

  Recap of upgrade status: The latest CMT v1r16 should now become the default; it has been tested for all releases. Gaudi v14r0 or later is needed when the jobOptions are installed in several InstallAreas; Gaudi v15r5 requires the update of the converters (see JIRA Gaudi-1).

  Points mentioned in discussion include:

  • (Traudl) whether include files are in the install area is up to the individual package
  • (Traudl) newer Gaudi supports a job options search path ($JOBOPTSEARCHPATH)
  • (Toby) He would like to remove AIDA and HTL from the list of independent externals and incorporate them with Gaudi, since only Gaudi uses them. Any objections? Traudl mentioned that AIDA is only an interface which is useful to connect to different histogramming packages, and that it is implemented in the latest Gaudi with -no_auto_import.

• Symbolic links for Windows: (Matt) They are available, and have been for a while, as he describes here, along with links to resources making this feature easier to use within Explorer.  See especially this shell-shocked article which does an excellent job of describing how to use the feature and what the pitfalls are.

• Release Manager: (Alex, Richard, email) The VRVS gods wouldn't let Alex attend the meeting; we'll get the full story next week. Schedule should go something like this:

  • Aug. 30: first edition of  new backend perl modules
  • Sept. 8:  migrate current functionality to the new backend; start on windows
  • Setp. 20: new frontend; will permit more administrative control of builds. May be ready to demonstrate Windows builds.

  Plan to have a code review soon after Heather returns in mid-September.

Flight integration news for the week:

• EngineeringModel: (Heather)  EngineeringModel v3r0404p0 requires upgrade of FluxSvc to fix a minor build problem, but basically is working on both OS's. Improvements to be integrated with the next tag include
  •  filling in event time (done) and livetime (practically done) in standard format in the event header.
  • adding GEM summary word to merit (done)
  • including bad events, properly flagged, in all ROOT output (in progress)

  Heather will be leaving for 2 weeks well-earned vacation. Joanne will sub as EM Gatekeeper; look for her under the desk.

• Calibration: (Joanne) Changes to metadata database (see JIRA issue CALIB-5) (calib_test version only) have been made and perform as expected, with no impact for Gleam users.  Will change the sister databases calib and calib_user shortly and also make a new tag of rdbModel (required for the new structure). (Leon) Are the new metadata fields required? (Joanne) No. They're not even necessarily appropriate for all calibration types.
• Tracker: (Leon)  Tracker splits service is now attached to new calibration type.  This was all brought up rather quickly and the experience is likely to insure that ToT will come up, if anything, more quickly.
• Cal: (Richard for Zach) First version of CalResponseSvc has been released; Richard and Berrie can now set about using it.
• GRITS: (Richard) Java technology will not be available fast enough for Pipeline internals; expect to continue with Perl script approach for at least a year. The new stuff will be restricted to Web interface area for now. Expect to have a demo of Pipeline interface on Thursday, with System Tests to follow soon.
• Workbook: (Richard) Aiming for demo on Thursday. Still need to make Workbook server accessible outside SLAC firewall.

AOB

• Traudl suggests you might want to take a look at the ICHEP04 program.
•  Thank you, Heather,   for filling in for a tardy colleague.

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J. Bogart Last Modified: 01-Jun-2010 15:45:42 -0700