[Halld-offline] Software Meeting Mintes, December 6, 2021

[Mark Ito]

People,

Please find the minutes here 
<https://halldweb.jlab.org/wiki/index.php/GlueX_Software_Meeting,_December_6,_2021#Minutes> 
and below.

   -- Mark

      _________________________________


    GlueX Software Meeting, December 6, 2021, Minutes

Present: Alex Austregesilo, Edmundo Barriga, Thomas Britton, Sean Dobbs, 
Sergey Furletov, Mark Ito (chair), Igal Jaegle, Richard Jones, Simon 
Taylor, Jon Zarling, Beni Zihlmann

There is a recording of this meeting 
<https://bluejeans.com/s/iHsrd3ouohh>. Log into the BlueJeans site 
<https://jlab.bluejeans.com> first to gain access (use your JLab 
credentials).


      Announcements

 1. New version set: 5.1.0
    <https://mailman.jlab.org/pipermail/halld-offline/2021-October/008671.html>
    This version set was released on October 29. Mark is preparing a new
    version set and now that Pull Request #605
    <https://github.com/JeffersonLab/halld_recon/pull/605>, "Remove
    incorrect logic in TRUTH photon construction," submitted by Sean,
    has been merged by Alex, a new tag of halld_recon can be applied and
    added to the new set.
 2. first step toward a global filesystem for Gluex
    <https://mailman.jlab.org/pipermail/halld-offline/2021-November/008681.html>.
    Richard led a discussion of how we can use StashCache
    <https://opensciencegrid.org/docs/data/stashcache/overview/> to
    create, maintain, and analyze a global file system. See his email
    <https://mailman.jlab.org/pipermail/halld-offline/2021-November/008681.html>
    for details.
      * The OSG is moving away from user X509 certificates and towards
        tokens for user authentication. This (and other issues) have
        caused a stoppage in job submission to the OSG over the past few
        weeks
          o The stoppage was confirmed by Thomas. "We are on the cutting
            edge of OSG use," he reports.
      * We should leverage efforts from the larger community on data
        management. StashCache is an example of an opportunity to do so.
      * Igal is interested in using this for PrimEx and SRC/CT.
      * One leading candidate for using this is for doing analysis
        launches on the OSG. This requires having our REST data out
        there on StashCache.
      * Mark: We (aka he) need education on StashCache. Perhaps Richard
        can give a pedagogically oriented presentation at some point.
      * Transitioning to Zoom
        <https://mailman.jlab.org/pipermail/halld/2021-December/000943.html>
        Mark put a wiki page together on the topic and invited us to
        contribute content.
      * New version set for simulating 2019-11 data
        <https://mailman.jlab.org/pipermail/halld-offline/2021-November/008710.html>
        There will be a new version sets coming out soon to pick up the
        fix from Sean mentioned above (Pull Request #605) as applied to
        the recon-launch compatible builds (2017-01, 2018-01, 2018-08,
        and 2019-11).


      Review of Minutes from the Last Software Meeting

We went over the minutes from the meeting on October 25th 
<https://halldweb.jlab.org/wiki/index.php/GlueX_Software_Meeting,_October_25,_2021#Minutes>. 


  * Thomas reported that the node formerly known as scosg16 is being
    rebuilt as scosg16-dev and will serve as a test platform for changes
    to OSG-related software. This avoids bringing in changes, untested,
    on the production Submit Host (now scosg20).
  * CentOS Stream looks to be the choice (not yet final) for a future
    upgrade of the JLab Farm.
  * On *Package Structure*, Mark has concluded that the project to
    render halld_sim and hdgeant4 independent of halld_recon by
    splitting out the pieces of code used by all three is not easily
    done and will require coding of interface routines, i.e., a
    significant refactoring effort. He has succeeded in doing the split
    in on a technical basis, but the extracted code represents an
    unacceptably large fraction of the various detector reconstruction
    packages. The split code, though not suitable for general use, may
    guide us if we want to pursue this change in the future.


      Review of Minutes from the Last HDGeant4 Meeting

We went over the minutes from the meeting on November 29 
<https://halldweb.jlab.org/wiki/index.php/HDGeant4_Meeting,_November_29,_2021#Minutes>. 


Hao Li has marked Issue #195 
<https://github.com/JeffersonLab/HDGeant4/issues/195>, "Crash adding 
daughters on RHEL/CentOS 8" as resolved.


      Report from the November 4th SciComp Meeting

Mark promised a report soon. He knows y'all can't wait. ;-)


      FAQ of the Fortnight: How do I get notified of changes in a
      repository on GitHub?

We took a quick look at the link provided in the answer to this FAQ 
<https://halldweb.jlab.org/wiki/index.php/GlueX_Offline_FAQ#How_do_I_get_notified_of_changes_in_a_repository_on_GitHub.3F>. 



      Upcoming Computing Review

We went over a few items linked from the Computing Review wiki page 
<https://halldweb.jlab.org/wiki/index.php/Software_and_Computing_Review_6>.

  * There will be a meeting to show slides this afternoon. All
    presenters in the review will present what they have.
  * A few of the slides that Mark prepared were flashed.
  * The pre-review handout document now runs to about 16 pages.


      Documentation Upgrade

Beni presented his thought on how we should improve software 
documentation. See his slides 
<https://halldweb.jlab.org/talks/2021/usedoxy.pdf> for all of the 
details. Some points (for emphasis):

  * User's are well-positioned to comment on the documentation and
    should be encouraged to do so.
  * An overview presentation of the data analysis flow, from
    reconstruction to analysis to ROOT analysis is lacking.
  * Richard: there are additional valuable resources for software
    information:
      o The HOWTO wiki page.
      o Recordings of past Tutorials/Workfests
  * Beni proposed forming a task force
      o Those present unanimously agreed that Beni should be the chair.
          + Richard remarked that "we are all 100% behind you, Beni."
      o Mark volunteered to provide advice to the new chair.
      o Beni will call an organizational meeting.

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