[Halld-offline] Offline Software Meeting, February 6, 2013

[Mark M. Ito]

Find the minutes below and at
https://halldweb1.jlab.org/wiki/index.php/GlueX_Offline_Meeting,_February_6,_2013#Minutes
   __

GlueX Offline Meeting, February 6, 2013
Minutes

    Present:
      * CMU: Paul Mattione, Curtis Meyer
      * FSU: Nathan Sparks
      * IU: Matt Shepherd
      * JLab: Mark Ito (chair), David Lawrence, Yi Qiang, Sascha Somov,
        Simon Taylor, Elliott Wolin, Beni Zihlmann

Announcements

     1. [26]CCDB is now required to build sim-recon.
     2. There is a new release of HDDS, 1.5. This fixes some geometry
        issues and is needed to go along with the corresponding changes in
        the tracking code.
     3. The new release of sim-recon, sim-recon-2013-01-11, uses CCDB 0.06
        and HDDS 1.5. Note that as of this writing, the recent bug fix from
        David for the REST format is not part of the release.

    There was some discussion about the meaning of the date in the
    sim-recon releases. Note that the date corresponds to the date when the
    tag was first made from the trunk and not the date that the release is
    announced. In general, not all of the code in a release will correspond
    to the date in the tag name. Changes may have to be introduced to fix
    bugs.

Collaboration Meeting

    The schedule for the offline session has been added to the [27]agenda
    on the wiki.

    Friday February 22, 2013
      * 14:45 Session IVb (150) --- Offline Reconstruction - (Organizer: M.
        Ito) Chair:
           + 14:45 (20) --- Overview and Data Challenge -- Mark Ito
           + 15:05 (20) --- CCDB -- Dmitry Romanov
           + 15:25 (20) --- Tracking -- Simon Taylor
           + 15:45 (20) --- TBD -- David Lawrence
      * 16:05 Coffee (30)
           + 16:35 (20) --- Physics Analysis Tools -- Paul Mattione

Data Challenge Status

    Not a lot has moved on analysis of data challenge data lately. Justin
    Stevens of MIT has been looking at them however. He expressed an
    interest in generating skims, to reduce processing time for selected
    channels. Paul is working on reconfiguring code in the REST plugin to
    facilitate skim creation.

The Transition to GEANT4 (discussion)

    We reviewed the [28]recent email discussion on the transition from
    GEANT3 to Geant4. In that discussion it was not unamimous that this is
    high priority. Points not raised in the emails:
      * It should be possible to freeze G3 development for a time to allow
        Richard to work on a stable code base.
      * Alternately, Richard could work on a branch, and changes to the
        trunk could be ported piecemeal, in a controlled fashion, to the
        branch if they occur.
      * Richard has stated that there will be a lot of code re-use in the
        transition, so work done validating G3 code will not go completely
        to waste when validating G4 code.
      * Discussion of this issue needs to involve Richard. Plans:
          1. Raise the issue informally with Richard at the collaboration
             meeting.
          2. Ask for a presentation on what is involved from Richard at a
             future offline meeting.

Closer review of b1pi/single-track jobs

    At Beni's request, we discussed the problem of lack of monitoring of
    the results from the bi-weekly tests of the b1pi and single-track
    analyses. Recently there have been failures that have gone ignored. In
    particular, Beni has tracked down a issue with the proton yield in b1pi
    tests introduced a few weeks ago (January 16).
      * Beni suggested that we show recent results at this meeting as a
        standing agenda item.
      * Mark showed a prototype system for a [29]light-weight email list
        system that interested collaborators could subscribe to on an
        opt-in basis. The idea is to have multiple result-nofication email
        lists.

    We will try both approaches.

Review of recent repository activity

      * Simon fixed a rare problems that was causing crashing in getting
        the fine-mesh magnetic field table. Junk position values from
        stopping particles were the cause of the problem.
      * Paul has disable RF-time bunch selection.
      * David has fixed an uninitiated pointer problem in the REST-format
        event generating code. He describes it as one of those
        I-wonder-how-it-ever-worked situations.
      * David discovered a feature where bggen puts the vertex at (0,0,0),
        the default, and hdgeant assumes it really means (0,0,65 cm). This
        was discovered while introducing a new parameter that puts the
        vertex in an arbitrary place.

    Retrieved from
"[30]https://halldweb1.jlab.org/wiki/index.php/GlueX_Offline_Meeting,_February_6,_2013"

References

   26. https://halldweb1.jlab.org/wiki/index.php/Calibration_Database
   27. 
https://halldweb1.jlab.org/wiki/index.php/GlueX-Collaboration-Feb-2013
   28. 
https://mailman.jlab.org/pipermail/halld-offline/2013-January/001257.html
   29. 
http://clasweb.jlab.org/websvn/prod/listing.php?repname=GlueX&path=%2Ftrunk%2Fscripts%2Fsimple_email_list%2F#_trunk_scripts_simple_email_list_
   30. 
https://halldweb1.jlab.org/wiki/index.php/GlueX_Offline_Meeting,_February_6,_2013

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