[Halld-offline] Alma9 Updates: version_5.14.0.xml

[Alexander Austregesilo]

Dear Colleagues,

As many of you are already aware, the JLab farm has started the process 
of changing its operating system. The target is Alma Linux 9, an 
open-source distribution that is binary compatible to Red Hat (RHEL). An 
interactive node, "ifarm9", is already available for tests and slurm 
will be upgraded in January in order to be able to select Alma9 farm 
nodes for batch jobs.

On our side, an upgrade of the operating system comes with several 
advantages. With a more recent compiler version (gcc11), we will be able 
to upgrade root and geant4 among other packages which in turns allows us 
to use modern features and keep up with developments. On the other hand, 
a few older dependencies will be deprecated, most notably python2.

In the recent weeks, numerous issues with our current software stack and 
build system were identified and fixed. Big thanks to Sean and Richard 
for paving the way, and a few others who helped testing.

We released a new version set version_5.14.0.xml which has minimal 
changes to its predecessor, but was built successfully on AlmaLinux9. 
 From now on, you can set up your environment on ifarm9 with the usual 
commands:

> source /group/halld/Software/build_scripts/gluex_env_boot_jlab.sh
>
> gxenv /group/halld/www/halldweb/html/halld_versions/version_5.14.0.xml
>
I have successfully processed one evio file. The produced REST file is 
compatible with the results on CentOS7. The same is true for analysis 
(PART) trees, even though the ReactionFilter plugin may crash at the 
very end of the input file. This problem was documented in this issue on 
github:

https://github.com/JeffersonLab/halld_recon/issues/613

MCWrapper and its dependency on python2-based RCDB prevented the testing 
of the full Monte Carlo Simulation chain so far. The new version set 
should be helpful to debug the workflow.

Feel free to try it out. We would appreciate your feedback, especially 
if you are the maintainer of programs, plugins or scripts. We also plan 
to release a singularity/apptainer container that is compatible with 
this build.

Best regards and happy holidays,

Alex

-- 
Alexander Austregesilo

Staff Scientist - Experimental Nuclear Physics
Thomas Jefferson National Accelerator Facility
Newport News, VA
aaustreg at jlab.org
(757) 269-6982