[Halld-offline] HDGeant4 Meeting Minutes, March 9, 2022

[Mark Ito]

Folks,

Please find the minutes here 
<https://halldweb.jlab.org/wiki/index.php/HDGeant4_Meeting,_March_9,_2022#Minutes> 
and below.

   -- Mark

      ____________________________________


    Minutes, HDGeant4 Meeting, March 9, 2022

Present: Alex Austregesilo, Sean Dobbs, Mark Ito (chair), Igal Jaegle, 
Richard Jones, Simon Taylor, Beni Zihlmann

There is a recording of this meeting 
<https://jlab-org.zoomgov.com/rec/share/INlcF7iSrNVxC-qYwGpQTABOJEInN9lBdy8ccUMriSi069ivUvSkGiN_FaPYD_y4.LpTL7FAojqdxz3Rm> 
(Passcode: cx8=wBQA) on the ZoomGov site.


      Announcements

Mark mentioned that Geant4 version 11 has been released. From the 
discussion:

  * Richard suggested that we think about upgrading the version of
    Geant4 we use from 10.04 to 10.07. Version 11 might still be a
    bridge too far.
  * He reminded us that this would require an upgrade of GCC beyond that
    shipped with CentOS 7, i.e., GCC 4.8.5. He has been using Developer
    Toolset 4 to get around this, which gives access to GCC 5.3.1.
  * He also reminded us that to use Geant4 10.07, we would also need to
    build HDGeant4 with an advanced version of GCC and that in turn
    requires a build of halld_recon with the same version of GCC. Indeed
    we would need to build everything in our software stack with a
    consistent GCC version.
  * This can be done under CentOS 7 (see above for an example), but not
    without installing software in addition to the RPMs that ship with
    the official CentOS 7 distribution, like a Devtoolset, or a custom
    build of GCC, or a non-official RPM.
  * Mark reminded us that our current CentOS 7 container already has
    Devtoolset 8 on board. This provides GCC 8.3.1.
  * Another way to get advanced versions of GCC would be to go to a
    CentOS-8-like distribution. CMU is already running CentOS 8 Stream.
  * Mark recently succeeded in creating a CentOS 8 Stream Singularity
    container and used it to build the current default version set
    (5.4.1). To do this he started from a Docker container from an
    individual since the official CentOS account on DockerHub does not
    provide any Stream container at all.
  * On a related issue, Mark, with help from Richard, was able to put a
    new version of our CentOS 7 container out on CVMFS. It is
    /cvmfs/singularity.opensciencegrid.org/jeffersonlab/gluex_prod:v1.
    This is a demo of a new-to-Mark way of updating our container on
    CVMFS since Docker took away our old method for free accounts. Also
    note that it is in the "jeffersonlab" directory and not the
    "markito3" directory.
  * No decision on a path forward yet.


      Review of minutes from the last meeting

We went over the minutes from the meeting on January 26th 
<https://halldweb.jlab.org/wiki/index.php/HDGeant4_Meeting,_January_26,_2022#Minutes>. 
Pull Request #202 <https://github.com/JeffersonLab/HDGeant4/pull/202>, 
"Fix for TAGH hits for the SRC/CT experiment." was approved and merged.


      Issues on GitHub

  * Issue #204 <https://github.com/JeffersonLab/HDGeant4/issues/204>,
    "crash with version set 5.3.0" was addressed by Pull Request #208
    <https://github.com/JeffersonLab/HDGeant4/pull/208>. We are waiting
    for Naomi Jarvis to confirm the fix and close the issue.
  * Mark reported that a new version set with changes from Simon for the
    CPP experiment is in preparation.


      Future of the HDGeant4 Meeting

We decided to transition this meeting from a regular bi-weekly meeting 
to one which is called on-demand as issues arise. During the discussion 
we noted that HDGeant4 is now a mature product and in general use around 
the Collaboration. Regular discussion of HDGeant4-related issues will be 
folded into the Software Meeting.

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