[Halld-offline] Offline Software Meeting Minutes, May 27, 2015

[Mark Ito]

Folks,

Please find the minutes below and at

https://halldweb.jlab.org/wiki/index.php/GlueX_Offline_Meeting,_May_27,_2015

   -- Mark
__________________________________________________________

GlueX Offline Meeting, May 27, 2015
Minutes

Present:

  * *CMU*: Curtis Meyer
  * *FIU*: Mahmoud Kamel
  * *FSU*: Aristeidis Tsaris
  * *JLab*: Mark Ito (chair), David Lawrence, Paul Mattione, Kei Moriya,
    Elton Smith, Nathan Sparks, Justin Stevens, Simon Taylor
  * *NU*: Sean Dobbs
  * *Regina*: Ahmed Foda, Zisis Papandreou
  * *UConn*: Richard Jones


Announcements

  * *gxproj5 account now available*. Mark announced that a new shared
    production account
    <https://halldweb.jlab.org/wiki/index.php/GlueX-related_shared_accounts_on_the_JLab_CUE>
    has been created. Kei will be using it for offline monitoring of the
    Spring 2015 data.
  * *New Offline Software wiki page released*. Mark reminded us that the
    Offline Software wiki page
    <https://halldweb.jlab.org/wiki/index.php/GlueX_Offline_Software>
    has been updated. The goal is better organization of the
    information. There are a still a few loose links at the bottom that
    need to be filed.
  * *Scratch git repositories on GitHub*. Mark went through the email he
    sent
    <https://mailman.jlab.org/pipermail/halld-offline/2015-May/002033.html>
    announcing the repositories. He flashed through some of the features
    of the GitHub site. [Added in press] The repositories have been
    updated
    <https://mailman.jlab.org/pipermail/halld-offline/2015-May/002041.html>.


Geant4 and GlueX

David

David described his effort with a G4 simulation of GlueX as configured 
for the charged pion polarization experiment, CPPsim. See his slides 
<https://halldweb1.jlab.org/wiki/images/d/de/20150527_CPPsim.pdf> for 
details. He discussed

  * geometry implementation
  * definition of the MWPC muon detector
  * compatibility with hdgeant
  * comparisons of muon response in FDC between hdgeant and CPPsim
  * tracking efficiency comparisons
  * other comparisons of detector responses: FCAL, TOF, pions in the
    FDC, momentum resolutions, CPP-critical kinematic variables


Richard

Richard described his efforts in the Geant4 conversion.

  * He thanked David for giving the effort a push forward.
  * The original design was GEANT3 oriented, difficulties found going to
    GEANT4
      o Some short-cuts don't work anymore, Geant4 pickier about
        overlaps, e. g., small overlaps of ends of CDC straws with
        aluminum end-plate.
      o Using Boolean subtraction works in principle, but incurs
        unacceptably large performance hit.
      o Solution from ILC fast MC effort: multiple layers in geometry
        definition, not all layers need to be active at all times.
  * To validate new geometry, needed visualization, but G4 bugs were
    found and needed to be addressed.
  * He plans to use CCDB/JANA-Resource scheme for magnetic field maps.
  * Work done on converting/validating HDDM output stage using the new
    C++ API.
      o Needed to expose formerly hidden methods in xstream library so
        that they are not masked by C++ STL routines.
      o Makes things more efficient. N. b. we are now using "new" code.
      o Old REST files will generate warnings. CRC checking were
        corrupted on write before now.
  * Next step implement all features of our current event generation
    scheme: genr8, bggen, particle gun, E&M background with coherent
    bremsstrahlung spectrum (cobrems).
  * Will use David's hit classes, as developed for CPPsim.
  * He will set-up a git repository for the new code. We should then be
    able to access pre-release versions of the code for testing.


Spring 2015 Commissioning Simulations

Sean reported on preparations for simulations of Spring 2015 data 
<https://halldweb.jlab.org/wiki/index.php/Spring_2015_Commissioning_Simulations>. 


  * Many jobs have run, but conditions were not tuned properly. We are
    starting over with
      o 3.0 GeV coherent edge
      o Lower cut-off for PYTHIA simulations, use PYTHIA down to 2.5 GeV
        photon energy.
  * Studying whether to include recent changes to mcsmear for the BCAL.


New build manager

Nathan presented a new system he has developed for doing comprehensive 
builds of GlueX software. See his slides 
<https://halldweb.jlab.org/talks/2015/HDBuildManager_52715.pdf> for 
details. He also made an announcement 
<https://mailman.jlab.org/pipermail/halld-offline/2015-May/002039.html> 
on the offline email list. He addressed:

  * Motivation
  * Capabilities
  * Template system
  * Julia modules
  * Tasks and Scripts


The system is well-suited for the situation where many builds are needed 
with slightly different versions of particular packages. All packages 
are built under a single directory; there is no ambiguity about which 
versions go together. This system was motivated by a debugging exercise 
Nathan went through some months ago with Paul.

There is large overlap in functionality with the version management 
system Mark has been working on. There is also virtually no overlap in 
software tools; Julia vs. Perl. It is unclear whether the two can be 
merged. Richard also mentioned that there is a third way to go: 
gridmake, which we use on for installation of the software on all OSG 
sites. In any case it is clear that the use-case that Nathan described 
needs support.
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