GlueX Software Meeting Minutes

[David Lawrence <davidl@jlab.org>]

Hi all,

    Minutes from yesterday's software meeting have been posted on the 
Wiki at:

http://www.jlab.org/Hall-D/software/wiki/index.php/December_4%2C_2006_Software

You can also find them below.

Next week we will be discussing the build system: What it does, how it 
behaves and most
importantly, how we want it to behave.

If you something to show or discuss, please let me know and I will put 
it on the agenda.

Regards,
-David


=========================================
December 4, 2006 Software Meeting minutes


Attendees: Alex D. David L.(chair) Elliott W. Matt S. Simon T. Zisis P.

===Report on Meeting with JLab IT group on OSG===
Alex reported on a meeting he and Elton had earlier in the afternoon 
with Chip Watson, Sandy Philpott,
Andy Kowalski of the JLab IT department. This was primarliy to discuss 
the numbers in
[http://dustbunny.physics.indiana.edu/~dzierba/osg Alex's presentation]
to the [http://www.opensciencegrid.org OSG group] in 2 days. In short, 
the participants were
all on board with the material in the presentation.

Alex also noted that they are still awaiting feedback on the
[http://www.nsf.gov/funding/pgm_summ.jsp?pims_id=6681&org=PHY&from=home 
PIF] proposal
submitted last September which relied heavily on the OSG. They don't 
expect to hear anything until
February.

===Tagged versions of the source code===
This was the main discussion topic of the meeting. At issue was that we 
are now in a mode where several
people are contributing to the source code repository and we are nearing 
the start of several
studies that will be done in support of CD-2. We should tag versions of 
the code so that we can
reproduce any results obtained from these studies.

David noted that subversion is different from CVS in that tags are not 
"frozen" in the same way. Essentially
the code is copied to the "tags" directory where it can be checked out, 
modified, and committed. The
concern is that would be a little too easy for someone to accidentally 
check changes in to a tagged
version that they did not want changes to go in to. David noted that it 
might be possible to restrict
checkouts to exports only or to limit check-ins using the hook scripts. 
He will investigate this.

Currently, there is an old tag in the repository called "STABLE". David 
exaplained that this was an
attempt to make a "floating tag" that allowed persons to always check 
out the most recent version
of the code that was blessed as being stable. This would allow 
developers to commit broken
or half-developed code in order to backup work that is significant, but 
not yet complete.

Matt pointed out that CLEO uses a tagging scheme where the date of the 
tag is used. If someone
wants the most recent tagged version, they just list them and take the 
latest one. This avoids
the problem of STABLE not being stable. It was agreed that we would 
adopt a similar policy in
principle. David would present a specific proposal next week.

Matt suggested that we also put tarballs of the external packages(such 
as xerces) required to build
the Hall-D source code on the web somewhere. These would be version 
known to work with
the Hall-D souce code and would save folks time in trying to identify 
and find the correct version
of a package. David noted that these were on the hall-d group disk at 
JLab already and he
would somehow link to them from the Wiki.

==Near Future Policy Decisions==
This discussion was brief. The intent was to add to the list of topics 
in the agenda that should be
discussed at future software meetings. Some comments that were made:

Elliott: We should revist our coding conventions and continue working on 
that list (it is only partially
complete). A suggestion of something to add would be statements 
encouraging the use of the STL.

Matt: Doxygen doesn't seem to have the code itself available on the web. 
If this is an option, we
should turn it on.
Elliott: There may be other options out there now besides Doxygen. 
Elliott volunteered to do a
quick web seach.

Matt: It would be nice to have a web interface to the repository that 
allows one to seach through
the history. David will check on this.

David: We currently only use one external genrator for GlueX (genr8). 
However, we don't seem to
have a repository of input files for it. We should make one in subversion.
Zisis: Regina has a small collection of such files they can provide.


==Action Items==

#Freezing tags in subversion through hooks (David)
#Periodic release tag proposal with initial tag (David)
#Put tarballs of external packages on Wiki(David)
#Survey alternatives to doxygen(Elliott)
#SVN web interface for browsing change logs (David)
#Gather input files for genr8 and make available (Zisis)

-- 

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