Stakeholder meeting notes – 2015/11/05

by Kyle Knoepfel in Events
Attendees:
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Christopher Backhouse, Lynn Garren, Herb Greenlee, Alex Himmel,
Chris Jones, Kyle Knoepfel, Rob Kutschke, Marc Paterno,
Gianluca Petrillo, Brian Rebel, Paul Russo, Erica Snider

Tagged Releases:
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Art 18.0.1

OS X 10.10 Yosemite compilation problems fixed.

Resolved Issues.
—————-

* Note that OutputModule validation inside of art requires that
user-written detail objects also provide validation.
Documentation has been provided.

* All ROOT 6 related issues are now closed. As of art 18.0.0
ROOT 6 is now used.

* #8402 Request art have the ability to created a new output
file for every input file.

This is already supported. You must set fhicl parameter:

services.scheduler.fileMode: NOMERGE

to get this behavior.

There was a lively discussion of how the word “merge” is used
to mean too many different things, and it is best to think
of “NOMERGE” as meaning “NOCONCATENATION”.

* #9078 ParameterSet validation enhancements

New feature TableFragment was demonstrated.

Robert Kutschke notes that the nested table pattern should
be encouraged instead.

* #10652 Geant4 v4 10_1_p02 e9 builds

These builds are now available.

* #10433 Scaling problem

Metadata can be dropped on input to prevent large memory
growth.

* #10599 Rename the simple option

Lynn Garren explained that “noarch” is the replacement
for “simple”.

Lynn also explained that a new tool is in development to
generate a checklist of unused products and dependencies
from a UPS products area which can be potentially cleaned
up to reclaim disk space. Note that deleted products can
always be redownload from SciSoft as needed.

Herb Greenlee asked if SciSoft has any space constraints yet.
Right now it does not, but we do have the ability to archive
data from there when we need to.

Other Ongoing Work
——————

The problem with ROOT 6 autoparse behavior causing large
memory usage increases is being addressed by Chris Green.

Acturus Issues
————–

The list of issues for the next release of art, designated
Acturus is now available. Please remember that time
estimates are approximate and the deadline for release
is tentative.

A major feature not yet in the list is a new streaming file
format. The intention is that this new file format should
be usable side-by-side with the current file format, the
differences will be in performance characteristics, not
functionality. We are waiting for requirements to be drawn
up before scheduling this effort.

If you want to peek at features we are considering, but are
not yet sure are possible you may examine the issues assigned
to v1_unscheduled on the art Roadmap.

Another small issue not yet on the list for Acturus is #8018
Mark data product to be dropped. This feature would reverse
the default persistence of data products. A product marked
for drop by the produces<> clause would by default not appear
in the output file, but it will be possible to override this
choice later during module execution.