[Halld-offline] Offline Software Meeting Minutes, December 11, 2013

[Mark Ito]

Folks,

Find the minutes below and at

https://halldweb1.jlab.org/wiki/index.php/GlueX_Offline_Meeting,_December_11,_2013#Minutes

   -- Mark
____________________________________________

GlueX Offline Meeting, December 11, 2013
Minutes

    Present:
      * CMU: Paul Mattione
      * FSU: Aristeidis Tsaris
      * IU: Kei Moriya, Matt Shepherd
      * JLab: Mark Ito (chair), David Lawrence, Dmitry Romanov, Simon
        Taylor, Elliott Wolin, Beni Zihlmann
      * Northwestern: Sean Dobbs

    [33]This meeting was recorded (the recording will be deleted after a
    month).

Announcements

    Yesterday there was a meeting at JLab to plan deployment of database
    and web servers for Hall D, both in the counting house and in the
    computer center. This was the second meeting we had. Paul Letta
    presented a design which we batted back and forth. We came to a general
    consensus; Paul has circulated a [34]document presenting the consensus
    design.

Software Review Re-Cap

    Mark had given [35]his summary of the review at two previous meetings
    and participants agreed to forgo a repeat performance.

    Elliott noted that the committee had expressed mild encouragement about
    the use of C++-11.

Review of Minutes from the November 13 Meeting

    We went over [36]the minutes.

    Dmitry is alpha-testing David's new SCONS build scheme.

Track Reconstruction Holes: Single Track Reconstruction

    Simon says:

      So far all I have been able to determine is that it seems to depend
      on the choice of mother volume for the straws PCON for the current
      geometry, TUBS for older versions). For tracks going in certain phi
      regions in the back angles, the straws seem to be invisible in
      GEANT. In fact these dead regions appear to be periodic in phi.

    Richard Jones has requested a "before" plot in addition to the "after"
    plot he already has to help diagnose.

    Paul told us that the last time this worked was circa the summer
    Analysis Workshop.

MC Track Genealogy

    Mark reported that he has a working revision to how particle parentage
    is report in the simulation data model. The method, suggested by
    Richard, is to keep track of the correlation between our global
    particle ID number (usually no more than 20 per event) and the Geant
    track number (which can go to several thousand) using an STL map,
    behind the scenes.

    He will check it into the trunk and would like others to look at it and
    report any problems or irregularities.

Long-term code maintainability

    Paul introduced a proposal to separate sim-recon into mcsim (genr8,
    bggen, hdgeant, mcsmear), recon (up to REST), and analysis.

    The overall issue is that, as the years pass, older data may require
    old versions of the software to reconstruct and/or analyze, but may
    still benefit from new versions of algorithms. How to maintain
    multiple, consistent versions is not a straightforward problem. Some if
    the problems can be solved by breaking our software packages into
    smaller, quasi-independent pieces. This introduces confusion due to
    multiple packages with multiple versions. Also only certain
    combinations of these versions will work together since the packages
    will never be truly independent.

    Matt laid out how CLEO dealt with this issue in an [email to the list].
    It frames the problem in more detail and provides a specific strategy.

    Mark is working on a system to specify a combination of various
    packages in an XML configuration file that can be used both to drive a
    complete build of our software and generate set-up scripts to use this
    build. He showed an [37]example file. This would help by providing a
    functional document of valid package combinations.

    Matt suggested that to move forward, we need a specific proposal on a
    system that we can discuss and modify. Mark volunteered to propose
    something based on his XML configuration scheme.

REST format and Track Swimming

    Paul noted that when analyzing REST format, a significant amount of
    time is spent re-swimming charged tracks to do matching with hits in
    the TOF and calorimeters. This matching is already done during
    reconstruction, we just do not save those results in the REST files.
    This gives us the option of using different matching algorithms
    post-reconstruction.

    We decided to go ahead and save the results of matching in the REST
    file. As an option, the track can be re-swum and matching done again,
    overwriting the saved results. In either case all clusters from the
    calorimeters are saved in REST. Paul will implement the changes.

Reconstruction Job Crash Status

    Simon checked in a [38]change to fix a problem with events that never
    finish processing]].

    Kei reported that he was still having problems with events of this type
    two weeks ago. Simon and Kei will check and see if this is due to the
    use of an old version or a different type of problem.

Early Adjournment

    We had to adjourn after an hour; another group had the meeting room.
    Remaining agenda items will be addressed at the next meeting.

    Retrieved from
"https://halldweb1.jlab.org/wiki/index.php/GlueX_Offline_Meeting,_December_11,_2013"

References

   33. http://cc.readytalk.com/play?id=93li7d
   34. https://halldweb1.jlab.org/talks/2013-4Q/gluondb1-Rev2.pptx
   35. 
https://halldweb1.jlab.org/wiki/index.php/Notes_on_2013_Software_Review
   36. 
https://halldweb1.jlab.org/wiki/index.php/GlueX_Offline_Meeting,_November_13,_2013#Minutes
   37. 
http://clasweb.jlab.org/websvn/prod/filedetails.php?repname=GlueX&path=%2Ftrunk%2Fhome%2Fmarki%2Fgluex%2Fversion%2Fversion.xml
   38. 
http://clasweb.jlab.org/websvn/prod/listing.php?repname=GlueX&path=%2Ftrunk%2Fsim-recon%2Fsrc%2Flibraries%2F&rev=11918&sc=1

-- 
Mark M. Ito, Jefferson Lab, (757)269-5295, marki at jlab.org