[Halld-offline] Software Meeting Minutes, September 29, 2020

[Mark Ito]

People,

Please find the minutes here 
<https://halldweb.jlab.org/wiki/index.php/GlueX_Software_Meeting,_September_29,_2020#Minutes> 
and below.

   -- Mark

_____________________________________________________


    GlueX Software Meeting, September 29, 2020, Minutes

The meeting was called to order at 3:00.

Present: Alex Austregesilo, Nathan Brei, Edmundo Barriga, Thomas 
Britton, Sean Dobbs, Mark Ito (chair), Igal Jaegle, Naomi Jarvis, David 
Lawrence, Simon Taylor, Nilanga Wickramaarachchi

There is a recording of his meeting 
<https://bluejeans.com/s/2R_0w0i4Ffv/> on the BlueJeans site. Use your 
JLab credentials to authenticate.


      Announcements

 1. New release of MCwrapper: DJ Kool Herc Release
    <https://github.com/JeffersonLab/gluex_MCwrapper/releases/tag/v2.5.1>
    Please see the link for the full release notes, but Thomas gave a
    live demo (at 1:08 in the recording) of some of the new features
    including project copying, color-coded project status indicators.
 2. New version set: 4.28.0
    <https://mailman.jlab.org/pipermail/halld-offline/2020-September/008329.html>
    Mark deployed a new set of update releases last week. He also
    released 4.29.0 just before the meeting which uses the version of
    MCwrapper Thomas had just described.
 3. New HOWTO: Install CCDB on your local machine
    <https://mailman.jlab.org/pipermail/halld-offline/2020-September/008333.html>
    Mark published these instructions on how to install CCDB on a local
    MariaDB server. Naomi asked if job-start-up would go faster when
    using MariaDB versus SQLite and we agreed that it just might.
 4. Future Trends in Nuclear Physics Computing
    <https://indico.bnl.gov/event/9023/> Mark advertised this on-going
    virtual conference, jointly sponsored by Brookhaven and JLab. He
    highlighted the talk this morning on Rucio, a product that we might
    be able to put to good use for tracking and transferring our various
    data files among various sites.
 5. *Porting to JANA2* Nathan and David have been working hard on a
    branch of halld_recon, converting it to build against JANA2. Some
    things are different in this JANA version.
      * DApplication is no longer used. The DEvent class is augmented to
        take up the slack.
      * C++ exceptions are used rather than return codes from member
        functions.
      * The JFactory syntax has been simplified.
      * So far 600 halld_recon source files have been modified, well
        past the half-way point.
      * halld_sim is next (a much smaller task).


      Review of Minutes from the Last Software Meeting

We went over the minutes from September 15th 
<https://halldweb.jlab.org/wiki/index.php/GlueX_Software_Meeting,_September_15,_2020#Minutes> 
without significant comment.


      Report from the Last HDGeant4 Meeting

We went over the minutes from the September 22nd meeting 
<https://halldweb.jlab.org/wiki/index.php/HDGeant4_Meeting,_September_22,_2020#Minutes> 
without significant comment.


      Review of recent issues and pull requests


        halld_recon

Alex closed a few issues yesterday:

  * Issue #439 <https://github.com/JeffersonLab/halld_recon/issues/439>
    Problem with analysis library on MC
  * Issue #381 <https://github.com/JeffersonLab/halld_recon/issues/381>
    Reconstruction of vertex XY position
  * Issue #355 <https://github.com/JeffersonLab/halld_recon/issues/355>
    ReactionFilter crash on simulated REST file


        CCDB

Mark remarked that Issue #68 
<https://github.com/JeffersonLab/ccdb/issues/68>, CCDB 2 fails on 
initialization with jana, is standing between us an deployment of CCDB 
2.0. Mark will ping Dmitry Romanov on this.


      Review of recent discussion on the GlueX Software Help List

We went over the list 
<https://groups.google.com/forum/#!forum/gluex-software>.

  * genEtaRegge still failing at MCSmear
    <https://groups.google.com/g/gluex-software/c/msvWR4Uz5MI> from
    Tolga Erbora. This one solved by the new release of MCwrapper,
    discussed earlier.
  * Comparison of list of runs between RCDB, analysis launch, and random
    triggers <https://groups.google.com/g/gluex-software/c/b9IpPdOYkxg>
    from Hao Li. Sean gave a report on this one, which is actually
    written up rather well in his reply to the thread on September 17th.
    In summary:
  * Some runs from Spring 2018 had missing random triggers due to
    problems with the beam current fiducials.
  * a different scheme is contemplated for the run just ended.
  * David encouraged us to send someone to meet with him in order to
    transfer responsibility for time fiducial management.


      The ROOT Color Palette

Naomi expressed her admiration for the default color palette in the 
recent releases of ROOT, and asked if it had a name. Alex replied that 
"kBird" is the word <https://youtu.be/6GizTr6QLfc>. He also mentioned 
"kViridis" as a palette that comes highly recommended.


      Duplicate Files on the Cache Disk

Alex brought our attention to the 2,343 cache files 
<https://halldweb.jlab.org/wiki/images/6/6e/Duplicate_cache_files.pdf> 
where the disk version is different from that on tape. These will never 
be deleted as long as they are in this state. Alex will send out an 
email to prompt the guilty to deal with these files. Special action may 
be required for files owned by users who are no longer members of the 
collaboration.


      Action Item Review

 1. Ask the Computer Center about staging the start of jobs in time. (Mark)
 2. Make sure that the automatic tests of HDGeant4 pull requests have
    been fully implemented. (Mark, Sean)
 3. Finish conversion of halld_recon to use JANA2. (Nathan)
 4. Ping Dmitry on CCDB Issue #68. (Mark)
 5. Remind folks about their problematic cache files. (Alex)
 6. Finish CentOS 8 compatibility project. (Mark)

The meeting was adjourned at 3:39.

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