[Halld-offline] [EXTERNAL] new User's Guide and release of HDDM

[Mark Ito]

Richard,

That is great news. HDDM really should be broken out as a separate 
package. In fact, I had started the process last year (see 
https://github.com/markito3/hddm), but I would like to move to your package.

Two points I would emphasize about HDDM independence:

 1. It makes versioning of the software much easier. For example, each
    version of halld_recon can be built with an unambiguous version of
    HDDM. You can even build a single version of halld_recon with
    different HDDM's (within limits) if that becomes useful without
    maintaining parallel branches of halld_recon, each branch with a
    different version of HDDM. It would put us a long way down the path
    of halld_recon/halld_sim independence as well.
 2. It allows outside projects to use HDDM without pulling in the entire
    halld_recon tree. For example, the Particle Physics Playground.

I like the choice of cmake as well. That seems to be how people in the 
wider world are voting with their feet anyway.

There remains the job of converting halld_recon and halld_sim to the new 
structure. I had started that as well last year (e.g., use $HDDM_HOME to 
get the HDDM bits). I need to revisit that.

   -- Mark

On 2/15/21 3:24 PM, Richard Jones wrote:
> Hello,
>
> As a user of GlueX software, you are probably familiar with the HDDM 
> file format that is used for our GlueX simulation and REST data, and 
> have used the HDDM tools at some level. I have just finished 
> collecting all of the bits of documentation on HDDM into a single 
> comprehensive User's Guide, which is published on our portal as 
> GlueX-doc-4917.
>
> I have also broken out all of the HDDM components from the halld_recon 
> and halld_sim frameworks into its own github project 
> https://github.com/rjones30/HDDM 
> <https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v2/url?u=https-3A__github.com_rjones30_HDDM&d=DwMFaQ&c=CJqEzB1piLOyyvZjb8YUQw&r=Te_hCR4EUlJ6iCDYLJ8Viv2aDOR7D9ZZMoBAvf2H0M4&m=nq3Ol7nci8SC5pT7ptTiDQukZoL7RA8gk7_eXhtm5GA&s=zEfT8ymErDUIUXHSSEogqCdfkUzhp0L0NVOq4f-siE4&e=>, 
> with its own build system based on CMake and supporting documentation. 
> The software managers for GlueX may at some point want to split out 
> hddm from where it is redundantly embedded in both halld_recon and 
> halld_sim, and fork it to https://github.com/JeffersonLab/HDDM 
> <https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v2/url?u=https-3A__github.com_JeffersonLab_HDDM&d=DwMFaQ&c=CJqEzB1piLOyyvZjb8YUQw&r=Te_hCR4EUlJ6iCDYLJ8Viv2aDOR7D9ZZMoBAvf2H0M4&m=nq3Ol7nci8SC5pT7ptTiDQukZoL7RA8gk7_eXhtm5GA&s=icndcis5uqaXoeGn7tQyKIbLadLVSksovHP3QMz87xw&e=> 
> so it can be managed using the version release system that Mark Ito 
> presently manages.
>
> This was quite a bit of effort, but the reason I did it now was to 
> support the creation of a set of GlueX activities on the Particle 
> Physics Playground. This PPP web site provides a simple interface to 
> sample data from a handful of well-known experiments (CLEO, BaBaR, 
> CMS) that come with guided exercises called "playground activities" 
> where students can "discover" the D+meson, or find the top quark in 
> multi-jet events. Based upon Jupyter notebooks within a fully hosted 
> analysis environment, I have found these to greatly lower the barrier 
> to undergraduates getting involved in analysis without spending weeks 
> and weeks learning C++ and ROOT. Even the ambitious high school 
> student can master one of these activities on their own within a 
> matter of a few hours.
>
> -Richard Jones
>
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