[Halld-offline] Offline Software Meeting Minutes, October 12, 2016

[Mark Ito]

Softies,

Please find the minutes below and at 
https://halldweb.jlab.org/wiki/index.php/GlueX_Offline_Meeting,_October_12,_2016#Minutes 
.

   -- Mark

____________________


    GlueX Offline Meeting, October 12, 2016, Minutes

Present:

  * *CMU*: Curtis Meyer
  * *JLab*: Alexander Austregesilo, Thomas Britton, Brad Cannon, Paul
    Eugenio, Mark Ito (chair), Hrachya Marukyan, Paul Mattione, Nathan
    Sparks, Simon Taylor, Beni Zihlmann
  * *NU*: Sean Dobbs

There is a recording of this meeting <https://bluejeans.com/s/wGOSf/> on 
the BlueJeans site.


      Announcements

 1. *New sim-recon release: 2.6.0* Mark announced the release
    <https://github.com/JeffersonLab/sim-recon/releases/tag/2.6.0> last
    week. Note that this release fixes problem that existed on the
    master branch last week that resulted in corrupt HDDM files when
    compression was turned on.
 2. *GlueX Software Reconstruction Test*. Paul reported on a new
    automatic test that runs every three days that does reconstruction
    and analysis on real data. One job is run per EVIO file.
      * The idea is to use the results like we have been using the
        results from the b1pi tests, to judge whether the reconstruction
        is getting better or worse as a function of time.
      * Development was motivated by the problems we encountered with
        tracking over the summer.
      * Histograms are produced <https://halldweb.jlab.org/recon_test/>.
        In the future we will have more succinct ways to compare the
        results of the jobs.
      * Email is sent out automatically on completion. If you are
        interested in receiving them, contact Paul or see the
        instructions for subscribing
        <https://halldweb.jlab.org/wiki/index.php/Simple_Email_Lists>.
 3. *Improvements to Offline Monitoring*. Thomas is working on
    enhancements to the system. First up is a text-file based
    configuration for specifying plots to be displayed, one plot per
    line of the file. If others have ideas for improvements on
    enhancements, please contact Thomas <mailto:tbritton at jlab.org>.


      Review of minutes from the last meeting

We went over the minutes from the meeting on September 28 
<https://halldweb.jlab.org/wiki/index.php/GlueX_Offline_Meeting,_September_28,_2016#Minutes>. 


  * Since the last meeting Mark asked Sandy Philpott of SciComp if old
    farm nodes were ever re-purposed via other groups at the Lab, and
    indeed this has been done. Beni and David Lawrence are looking into
    feasibility.


      Launches

Alex gave the report:

  * Nothing is running right now.
  * We want to start a monitoring launch as soon as possible, but there
    is a problem with covariance matrices in the current version. Simon
    had checked in a fix. Mark will produce a patch release soon, in
    coordination with Alex.
  * Version 3 of the reconstruction will start soon after that.


      Software Review 4 Preparations

Curtis reported that the GlueX Doc 
<http://argus.phys.uregina.ca/cgi-bin/private/DocDB/ShowDocument?docid=3113> 
is up to 20 pages. Others should get a copy from the DocDB or check it 
out from GitHub (log in first) 
<https://github.com/JeffersonLab/gluex_documents> and look it over and 
add their contributions to their assigned sections.


      Run-Dependent Geometry Proposal

Sean outlined his proposal 
<https://halldweb.jlab.org/wiki/index.php/Run-dependent_Geometry_Proposal>.

He points out that the geometry can have small changes (e. g., start 
counter shifts after retraction and insertion of the target) and big 
ones (e. g., installation of a DIRC) and these will vary from run period 
to run period. We want a way to select the correct geometry as a 
function of run number in an automated way. He assumes that we are using 
HDGeant4, which reads in the geometry on the fly rather than using the 
HDGeant method of writing source code that reflects the geometry and 
then compiling that code into the simulation program.

The gist of the proposal is the serve complete HDDS XML files from the 
CCDB. The CCDB is a convenient way to control run-dependent quantities, 
and the geometry is just another example. He will start by writing a new 
class that fetches the XML from the CCDB. Then a new geometry provider 
will have to be implemented in JANA to receive the information in the 
same way that the current version reads from disk. Paul M. likes the 
proposal, calling it long overdue.

Beni and others realized that there is a problem keeping versions of the 
HDDS XML file in GitHub as we do now. Mark remarked that Git is good for 
controlling source code, but the HDDS XML is really data that has a life 
outside changes to the source code. We should probably migrate to 
complete control of the HDDS XML in the CCDB and remove it from Git in 
the future.


      Conversion of Macros to ROOT 6

Beni reminded us that if we have not done so already, we should be 
working on ROOT 6 conversion of our calibration macros. He discovered 
that he himself has a lot of work to do in this area.


      Review of recent discussion on the GlueX Software Help List

We went over recent items from the list 
<https://groups.google.com/forum/#%21forum/gluex-software>.

Mark reported that the necessary software RPMs have been installed on 
the new CentOS7 ifarm node (ifarm1402), but a build had not been 
attempted yet. That should come soon.


      Action Items from This Meeting

 1. Contribute paragraphs to the Software Review document. (all)
 2. Check calibration macros for ROOT 6 compatibility. (all)
 3. Design scheme for managing multiple authoritative versions of HDDS
    XML files.
 4. Make a patch release of sim-recon with covariance matrix fix. (Mark)
 5. Contact Paul M. if you want to receive email upon completion of the
    new periodic reconstruction test.


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