[Halld-offline] Offline Software Meeting Minutes, December 9, 2015

Fri Dec 11 14:30:36 EST 2015

Please find the minutes below and at 
https://halldweb.jlab.org/wiki/index.php/GlueX_Offline_Meeting,_December_9,_2015#Minutes 
.

_______________________________

    GlueX Offline Meeting, December 9, 2015, Minutes

Present:

  * *CMU*: Naomi Jarvis, Curtis Meyer
  * *FIU*: Mahmoud Kamel
  * *JLab*: Alex Barnes, Mark Ito (chair), David Lawrence, Paul
    Mattione, Kei Moriya, Dmitry Romanov, Nathan Sparks, Justin Stevens,
    Simon Taylor
  * *NU*: Sean Dobbs

There is arecording of this meeting <https://bluejeans.com/s/8UyN/>on 
the BlueJeans site.

      Announcements

  * sim-recon 1.7.0
    <https://mailman.jlab.org/pipermail/halld-offline/2015-November/002175.html>was
    released on November 23.
  * CCDB v1.06.00
    <https://mailman.jlab.org/pipermail/halld-offline/2015-December/002177.html>was
    released on December 3. v1.06.00 is about to come out. It fixes
    issues with password prompts on creation new variations. The C++
    library is unaffected. Dmitry is responding toissues
    <https://github.com/JeffersonLab/ccdb/wiki>reported on the GitHub
    site and has identified some of them asmilestones
    <https://github.com/JeffersonLab/ccdb/wiki>for v1.07. Documentation
    for CCDB is now kept on thewiki
    <https://github.com/JeffersonLab/ccdb/wiki>on the CCDB GitHub site.
  * JANA 0.7.4 was released on December 1. SeeDavid's announcement
    <https://mailman.jlab.org/pipermail/halld-online/2015-December/000692.html>for
    the details of this new version. 0.7.4p2 is the latest version and
    should be used for new builds.
  * Curtis reported that we should expect a Software Review in Summer 2016.

      Review of Minutes from November 11

We went over the [[GlueX Offline Meeting, November 11, 
2015#Minutes|minutes].

  * Nathan updated the situation with binary distributions. After the
    last report some instabilities were encountered that have been
    addressed. Currently downloads for CentOS 6 and 7, RedHat 6 and 7,
    Ubuntu 14, and Fedora 22 are available.
  * After our review of results from the semi-weekly b1pi tests, Paul
    went in a fixed a number of issues. The main one outstanding is the
    issue of BCAL timing (discussed later in the meeting).

      Offline Monitoring Report

Kei gave the report. He pointed out several webpages that compile 
statistics on each launch and do comparisons them between launches. 
Seehis slides 
<https://halldweb1.jlab.org/wiki/images/0/0c/2015-12-09-offline_monitoring.pdf>for 
the details.

We talked a bit about exit status codes from our binaries. JANA 0.7.4 
reports a set of error codes when problems are detected, but main 
programs need to ask for the information and post them upon exit. None 
of our current programs do this. Sensible exit codes are very convenient 
and should be implemented going forward.

Paul noted that last Friday's launch had to be aborted due to software 
package incompatibilities. The re-launch was on Monday. Initial results 
are available.

Sean mentioned that the post-launch macros are not being run. He will 
get with Paul to get the directory location right.

Paul will be taking over the effort. He and the group thanked Kei for 
running the show and developing the system over the last year.

      Update to CCDB Microscope Energy

Alex led us throughRichard's email 
<https://mailman.jlab.org/pipermail/halld-tagger/2015-November/000565.html>describing 
the change to the CCDB that corrects the (previously) anomalous relation 
between energy bins in the tagger microscope and those in the tagger 
hodoscope. The upshot: survey data was correct, but not reflected 
properly in the CCDB.

Justin asked if the constants are correct for simulation. That has been 
taken care of.

Alex cautioned the group: channels 101 and 102 of the microscope exist 
as physical detectors, but there is no read-out instrumentation for them.

      BCAL timing calibration and pion ID in Simulation

Paul noticed a feature of the BCAL timing in the b1pi tests affecting 
both charged and neutral clusters. In particular as the momentum of 
pions increases, beta asymptotes at a value several percent below 1.

Sean has been looking into the issue. The individual hits times are OK, 
but the shower times are off from the truth in simulation by about half 
a nanosecond. Tegan has modified the clustering code, mainly to account 
for the curvature effect in the BCAL, and Sean has found that it does a 
better job on the timing than the standard algorithm. We will run some 
large-scale tests to confirm the effect. The BCAL group is comfortable 
with switching to the new algorithm if the tests come back favorable.

Sean mentioned that one lesson from this is that we should be paying 
closer attention to the b1pi test results. He will re-raise the issue at 
a future BCAL meeting.

      C++ code analyzer + clang 3.7.0

David led us throughhis email 
<https://mailman.jlab.org/pipermail/halld-offline/2015-December/002179.html>announcing 
auto-generation (nightly) of a web page that reports possible problems 
in our C++ code. The report itself is available 
athttps://halldweb.jlab.org/scan-build/LATEST/. The Clang/LLVM compiler 
suite generates the report simply by inspecting the source code. Richard 
and Simon have already modified code to avoid these warnings.

Dmitry mentioned another system called PVT Studio[?] that performs a 
similar function. There might be some non-overlap in the Venn diagram of 
problems detected.

      JANA Status Bits

David us throughhis email 
<https://mailman.jlab.org/pipermail/halld-offline/2015-November/002172.html>announcing 
a 64-bit status word available in the new DStatusBits class. Please see 
his email for the rather complete details.

      Run Number Assignments for Simulation for Future Fun Periods

Justin introduced the topic. Traditionally run numbers increment by one 
for each run started by the DAQ. Justin described the scheme used by 
STAR where the first 2 digits of the run number are the year, the next 3 
are the Julian date, and the lower order digits are a serial number, 
reset to 1 (zero?) each day.

The topic was raised at last week's calibration meeting. Our current 
policy is that when we generate simulated data that is supposed to match 
real detector conditions, the run numbers should be in the same range as 
the corresponding real data and the "mc" variation of CCDB should be 
used for calibration constants. Sean wants to generate data to match 
data to be taken in the Spring, but does not know what run number to 
use. This is a problem since the run numbers are encoded into the events 
at generation time. Sean advocated having a break in the run number 
sequence so that the next run range is predictable, say 10,000 to 19,999 
for example.

We did not come to any conclusions about this. David pointed out that 
others in the collaboration, especially the Online Working Group, and 
the JLab Data Acquisition Group will likely have important comments to make.

      Review of Recent Pull Requests

We went over allpull requests for sim-recon 
<https://github.com/JeffersonLab/sim-recon/pulls?q=is%3Aclosed+is%3Apr>going 
back to the last meeting. We noted thatDavid's pull request 
<https://github.com/JeffersonLab/sim-recon/pull/131>to implement 64-bit 
run numbers required changes to 301 files.

      Deleting Old Pull-Request Builds

Sean reported that we have accumulated about half a terabyte of builds 
to test pull request. He proposed deleting those older than a month and 
the group endorsed this. Mark will put together a cron job to do the deed.

      Running Tests on Pull-Requests Builds

Nathan presented his thinking on running the pull-request builds as a 
further test of code viability. Please seehis slides on "crash testing" 
<https://halldweb.jlab.org/talks/2015/crash-testing.pdf>. He is putting 
together a script as proof-of-principle, to be run after successful 
pull-request builds.

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