[Halld-offline] Alma9 Updates: version_5.14.1.xml

[Alexander Austregesilo]

Dear Colleagues,

I noticed over the holidays that hdgeant4 was not correctly building 
with the version set 5.14.0 on RHEL7/CentOS7. For that reason, the 
default version set at JLab which is used for nightly builds and pull 
request tests was reverted to 5.13.0.

With few modifications to the diracxx library and the build_scripts 
system, we now have a functioning build of the full GlueX software stack 
on CentOS7/RHEL7 and AlmaLinux9. The default version will switch over to 
version_5.14.1.xml before midnight tonight.

Wishing a happy new year to you all,

Alex


On 12/21/2023 2:57 PM, Alexander Austregesilo via Halld-offline wrote:
> 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