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<p>People,</p>
<p>Please find the minutes <a moz-do-not-send="true" href="https://halldweb.jlab.org/wiki/index.php/GlueX_Software_Meeting,_September_27,_2021,_2021#Minutes">here</a>
and below.</p>
<p> -- Mark</p>
<p> ____________________________________</p>
<p>
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<h2 id="firstHeading" class="firstHeading" lang="en"><span dir="auto">GlueX Software Meeting, September 27, 2021,
2021, </span><span class="mw-headline" id="Minutes">Minutes</span></h2>
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<p>Present: Alex Austregesilo, Thomas Britton, Sean Dobbs,
Mark Ito (chair), Richard Jones, Simon Taylor, Beni
Zihlmann
</p>
<p>There is a <a rel="nofollow" class="external text" href="https://bluejeans.com/s/VS30prySHvv/">recording
of this meeting</a>. Log into the <a rel="nofollow" class="external text" href="https://jlab.bluejeans.com">BlueJeans site</a>
first to gain access (use your JLab credentials).
</p>
<h3><span class="mw-headline" id="Announcements">Announcements</span></h3>
<ol>
<li> <a rel="nofollow" class="external text" href="https://mailman.jlab.org/pipermail/halld-offline/2021-September/008630.html">/work/halld3:
transition to new server</a>. The transition
happened as scheduled on September 2nd. Mark asked the
group whether we want to maintain a set of links to
preserve the viability paths like "/work/halld3" even
though /work/halld3 no longer exists as a physical
partition. Recall we have some links like this to
/work/halld2 from many years ago. No one seemed bother
by the current situation, so we will likely leave well
enough alone.</li>
<li> <a rel="nofollow" class="external text" href="https://mailman.jlab.org/pipermail/halld-offline/2021-September/008632.html">new
work disk has snapshots</a>. Mark pointed out the
special directory one must use to access snapshots on
the new work disk: /work/halld/.zfs/snapshot .</li>
<li> <a rel="nofollow" class="external text" href="https://mailman.jlab.org/pipermail/halld-offline/2021-September/008638.html">New
recon-launch-compatible version sets with tagger
energy fixes</a>. Sean explained that these changes
have no effect until the photon end-point energy table
has been filled in for the relevant runs. Once those
values are in the CCDB, the latest scheme for energy
assignment to tagger counters will kick in.</li>
<li> <a rel="nofollow" class="external text" href="https://mailman.jlab.org/pipermail/halld-offline/2021-September/008644.html">New
version set: 4.46.0</a>. Mark released this version
set yesterday. He is preparing another version set
that has the same versions of the GlueX-written
software, but updates our support packages, e.g., ROOT
and Geant4. He mentioned that the version of Geant4 in
this upcoming release looks like it solves <a rel="nofollow" class="external text" href="https://github.com/JeffersonLab/HDGeant4/issues/195">HDGeant4
Issue #195: Crash adding daughters on RHEL/CentOS 8</a>.</li>
</ol>
<h3><span class="mw-headline" id="Review_of_Minutes_from_the_Last_Software_Meeting">Review
of Minutes from the Last Software Meeting</span></h3>
<p>We went over the <a href="https://halldweb.jlab.org/wiki/index.php/GlueX_Software_Meeting,_August_17,_2021#Minutes" title="GlueX Software Meeting, August 17, 2021">Minutes
from the meeting on August 17th</a> without
significant comment. Unfortunately the <a href="https://halldweb.jlab.org/wiki/index.php/GlueX_Software_Meeting,_August_31,_2021#Minutes" title="GlueX Software Meeting, August 31, 2021">last
software meeting</a> was held on August 31st. This may
explain the lack of significant comment.
</p>
<h3><span class="mw-headline" id="Review_of_Minutes_from_the_Last_HDGeant4_Meeting">Review
of Minutes from the Last HDGeant4 Meeting</span></h3>
<p>We went over the <a href="https://halldweb.jlab.org/wiki/index.php/HDGeant4_Meeting,_August_24,_2021#Minutes" title="HDGeant4 Meeting, August 24, 2021">minutes from
August 24th</a>. Again the chair directed us to the
wrong meeting. The <a href="https://halldweb.jlab.org/wiki/index.php/HDGeant4_Meeting,_September_7,_2021#Minutes" title="HDGeant4 Meeting, September 7, 2021">last
meeting</a> was held on September 7th. Not a lot of
comment here either.
</p>
<h3><span class="mw-headline" id="Report_from_the_September_2nd_SciComp_Meeting">Report
from the September 2nd SciComp Meeting</span></h3>
<h3><span class="mw-headline" id="Report_from_the_September_2nd_SciComp_Meeting_2">Report
from the September 2nd SciComp Meeting</span></h3>
<p>Mark went through the <a rel="nofollow" class="external text" href="https://halldweb.jlab.org/talks/2021/scicomp+halls-20210902.pptx">slides
that Bryan Hess showed</a> at the meeting. Please take
a look for all of the details. One item: statistics on
files permanently lost during the tape library incident
last year.
</p>
<p>Thomas filled in details of the discussion on
OSG-related topics. scosg20.jlab.org is now in
production, replacing scosg16.jlab.org. This new Submit
Host is "on and island;" it does not mount group, cache,
etc. to prevent abuse by users. No Hall D users are part
of the history leading to this decision, AFAIK.
</p>
<p>Richard raise the question of access to files from tape
via the cache disk. Thomas pointed to use of
dtn1902.jlab.org (the Data Transfer Node) as a possible
solution. In the interest of time we were not able to
bring the discussion to any conclusion. We need to take
up the topic in the near future in some forum or
another.
</p>
<p>Mark mentioned that there is a new mailing list at the
Lab dedicated to discussion of OSG-related issues for
the JLab community. Go <a rel="nofollow" class="external text" href="https://mailman.jlab.org/mailman/listinfo/OSG-Users">here</a>
to subscribe.
</p>
<h3><span class="mw-headline" id="FAQ_of_the_Fortnight:_How_do_I_check_on_the_status_of_my_JLab-mandated_training.3F">FAQ
of the Fortnight: How do I check on the status of my
JLab-mandated training?</span></h3>
<p>Mark pointed out that the link he posted in the chat at
the Collaboration Meeting is recorded in an <a href="https://halldweb.jlab.org/wiki/index.php/GlueX_Offline_FAQ#How_do_I_check_on_the_status_of_my_JLab-mandated_training.3F" title="GlueX Offline FAQ">FAQ</a>. This also a <a href="https://halldweb.jlab.org/wiki/index.php/GlueX_Offline_FAQ#How_do_I_find_a_list_of_JLab_users_that_I_sponsor.3F" title="GlueX Offline FAQ">FAQ on how JLab staff can
get a list</a> of their sponsorees.
</p>
<h3><span class="mw-headline" id="Documentation_Writing_Festival">Documentation
Writing Festival</span></h3>
<p>We had a discussion on how we might improve
documentation for our software.
</p>
<ul>
<li> Beni proposed the idea of a Documentation Writing
Festival.</li>
<li> Sean: documentation exists but is scattered and
hard to find.</li>
<li> Beni: a Doxygen tutorial session would be useful.</li>
<li> Beni: we also need a PDF-file-like description of
software systems</li>
<li> Beni: code added since Paul Mattione was here has
been added to and the additions are not usually
documented.</li>
<li> Beni: variables in ROOT trees are poorly
documented. This leads to use of variables that are
not fully understood.</li>
<li> Mark has a back-burner project to revive our
Doxygen site. It was broken with the sim-recon to
halld_recon/halld_sim transition.</li>
<li> Sean pointed us to the <a rel="nofollow" class="external text" href="https://www.jlab.org/Hall-D/software/HDSoftware_Documentation/">link
for the sim-recon Doxygen page</a>. He thinks the
organization could be improved.</li>
<li> Mark thought that we should first decide on the
structure and practices with which documentation
should be developed and maintained.</li>
<li> Beni: the terminology of software objects should be
standard or we run the risk of talking past each
other.</li>
<li> Thomas used Doxygen when he was a grad student on
LHCb. He liked it.</li>
<li> Richard asked about Doxygen and FORTRAN. Apparently
this is not impossible.</li>
<li> Thomas told us that software packages for LHCb
often came with a nice, thick, comprehensive manual,
with explanations and examples.</li>
<li> Thomas and Beni: Multiple levels of documentation
needed. One level does not do the job.</li>
<li> Thomas: software documentation is a cultural
problem.</li>
<li> Beni: approval of pull requests could depend on
having an acceptable level of documentation in the
code.</li>
<li> Alex and Beni: the DSelector and the GlueX ROOT
Analysis package might be the most important to
document since they have the greatest number of users.</li>
<li> Richard: the analysis library in halld_recon is
very complicated. It would be hard to document without
Paul around.</li>
<li> Richard remarked that the trend is software these
days is toward Python. We should keep that in mind.</li>
<li> After Sean had to leave, Beni expressed the hope
that Sean would take the lead on this effort.</li>
<li> Mark will also think about how we organize the
discussion going forward.</li>
</ul>
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