Minutes of TSB meeting

Thursday April 11th, 2002

Excuses:
J.Allison, A Dell'Acqua, H.Kurashige, M.G.Pia

Minutes:
G.Cosmo

Note

Initial items

• Andrea Dell'Acqua replaces Katsuya Amako as representative for ATLAS in the TSB.
• Minutes of previous TSB meeting have been approved.
• Updated list of pending actions:
• Closed actions:
• 10.4 - 2 examples/applications have been proposed and people are now working on it.
• 11.16 - to be achieved by the next delta review in September/October.
• 13.4 - proposal made and approved, see notes below.
• 13.5 - G.Folger and G.Cosmo will plan activities, with help of physics WG coordinators.
• 14.1 - schedule and draft paper circulated by J.Allison. The final version of the paper is expected within end of April.
• 14.8 - G.Cosmo contacted Lassi Tuura, who agreed to make a presentation at the CC meeting. To be notified in advance!
• 15.3 - test-application identified. An updated version is expected soon from ATLAS.
• 15.5 - OK for CERN and KEK, TRIUMF and SLAC evaluating the possibility to have a single license for North America.
• Updates:
• 9.6 - 2 examples using HepMC v.1.21 are now under development and already finalised. Testing is ongoing on Linux.
                  Will soon be released as extended examples. Porting to the latest HepMC version in CLHEP 1.8 will be necessary.
• 10.3 - will be discussed in the architecture WG meeting by end of April, M.Asai will report.
• 13.2 - will be discussed in the architecture WG meeting by end of April.
• 15.6 - M.Asai proposes introduction of "severity" level for G4Exception together with unique identifier for exceptions.
                    M.Asai will present the proposal for discussion through the Category Coordinators e-mail list.
• 16.1 - D.Wright made a report on the current status, see below. Proposed manual of physics models.
                    J.Apostolakis will contact D.Wright concerning required resources.
• 16.2 - action pending creation of the proper infrastructure.
                    Possible candidate applications: ATLAS EM barrel testbeam, and category-level tests from EM WG.
• New actions:
• 18.1 - G.Folger to evaluate, design and implement a registration mechanism for Beta testers of development releases.
• 18.2 - G.Folger & G.Cosmo to estimate resources needed for Web restructuring, involving physics WG coordinators.
• 18.3 - All WG coordinators, to provide by end of April, a list of the expected developments (no interface changes) to be included in the June release.
• 18.4 - S.Sadilov to add a "bug-fix" flag for tags submitted in Bonsai, with possibility to hook to Bugzilla problem reports.
• 18.5 - G.Folger & G.Cosmo to implement a more intuitive web form buttons-based for downloads of source-code/binaries.
• 18.6 - J.Apostolakis to set up a meeting with ESA and relevant coordinators for reported problem of "non-physical" results for particles approaching boundaries.
• 18.7 - Y.Morita to circulate proposal for persistency to TSB and experiments' representatives by mid-May 2002.
• 18.8 - Y.Morita & S.Sadilov, to clarify policy for support of Objectivity/DB at CERN.
• 18.9 - Architecture WG, to evaluate necessary resources for preparing new revision of general URD and implement it by September 2002.
• 18.10 - S.Sadilov to make available for testing new web tool for requirements collection & analysis, by April 19^th 2002.
• 18.11 - S.Sadilov to make available link for Tinderbox and LXR from internal web pages.
• 18.12 - J.Apostolakis to nominate responsible for general editing/maintenance of training kit.
• 18.13 - All WG coordinators, to update training kit material according to recent improvements from SLAC Users' Workshop.
• 18.14 - M.Asai to present proposal for redesign of G4Exception to Category Coordinators mailing list.
• Reports from other meetings
• Draft minutes of past joint CB-TSB meeting circulated. Waiting for final draft.
• Minutes of Category Coordinators meeting of March 27th are being prepared, report on specific items below.

Detailed Documentation review

• D.Wright reported about plans and work in progress
• Physics Reference Manual:
• revision of the English language, readability and reference consistency is ongoing
• no much progress for inclusion of omitted material
• proposed addition of index, requires huge effort
• Toolkit Developers Manual:
• review of missing figures
• Proposal by D.Wright for a manual on physics models
• no information should be included in the Physics Reference Manual
• resource are required. J.Apostolakis will arrange with Dennis
• It was noticed that the number of documents required to be updated according to the evolution of the code, is too large.
• the review of the documentation should be done properly considering also maintenance issues.

Requirements and Development Objectives

• The list of goals has been formulated in considering development goals and advanced users' requests.
• Listed goals are expected by end 2002.
• IMPORTANT: indicative dates should be expressed, in order to plan features in the scheduled releases.
• Members of experiments/laboratories in the Collaboration are invited to review them and the schedule proposed to see if it fits their needs.

Re-design/improvement of interactivity/GUI

Use of Python scripting through SWIG

Documentation on adoption of pointers

Front-line support for accelerator community

• Geometry:
• items have been prioritized with indicative dates
• some activities require collaboration and sharing of efforts with other WGs or interested parties
• Hadronics:
• a new item concerning "publications" has to be added to items list
• coordination with low-energy EM WG is required for some development items
• Low-Energy EM: milestones should be expressed in such a way they can be measured.
• Persistency: Y.Morita presented the plan for a redesign of the persistency module through abstract interfaces (actions 18.7, 18.8).

• IMPORTANT: the development goals/items of some WGs are NOT in the list. To be corrected !

Scheduled releases for 2002

• The schedule for 2002 releases was approved.
• a minor release 4.1 is scheduled for June 28^th.
• a major release 5.0 is scheduled for December 13^th.
• additional minor releases and patches may be scheduled according to development needs
• Category Coordinators must provide to the release manager the list of expected features for the June release, by April 30^th. Action 18.3.
• the list of expected features will be published with the pre-announcement of the release
• A flag to distinguish "bug-fix" category tags will be introduced in Bonsai. Action 18.4.
• Given the issues raised from the published download statistics for Geant4 4.0, it has been decided to modify the distribution policy for patches:
• the patched source code will be distributed separately as usual
• the whole source code archive distributed will be updated to include the latest patched code as well
• distributed binaries will coherently refer to the patched source code
• a more intuitive web form for source/binaries downloads, based on download buttons will be provided. Action 18.5.
• In case serious bugs are discovered on public/development releases (example, release 4.0 of December), related installations on AFS at CERN will be declared unusable (upon notice 2 weeks before via e-mail to the CERN community) and removed from the installation area.
• It was stressed the need to have documented as much as possible features introduced in a tag proposed in Bonsai. Bug-fixes should be documented as well, specifying in case of a known reported bug, the related ID number in Bugzilla. Information about the tag including the fix should be input in Bugzilla as well (in this case a link between Bugzilla and Bonsai can be created to help the process, see action 18.4).
• In case of urgent fixes for bugs reported by users, developers are free to provide the fix for testing directly to the user and feed it back to system testing as well, according to the established procedures.
• Underlying libraries/frameworks
• CLHEP:
• a new "bug-fix" release 1.7.5 will be soon tested and installed in the Geant4 development area. This release will include all fixes soving also the performance penalty observed in 3-vectors and rotations. Geant4 4.1 will be most likely based on CLHEP 1.7.5.
• a new release 1.8.0 will be released by end of April and will include new features and modules (including HepMC). It will also drop support for non-ISO platforms and obsolete systems (HP-UX, IBM-AIX, SGI-IRIX). Geant4 5.0 will be most likely based on CLHEP 1.8.
• AIDA:
• a new version 4.0 of ANAPHE compliant with AIDA 2.2 is now available.
• minor evolutions/extensions of AIDA interfaces are foreseen by end of May. Geant4 examples with histogramming will have to evolve as well, if necessary, and the activity will have to be coordinated in strict collaboration with the AIDA team.
• a public AIDA Workshop will be held at CERN early June. In this Workshop, future evolutions of AIDA will be discussed and planned.
• Distribution of development releases:
• Following the proposal expressed in the document for 2002 release schedule, it has been agreed to distribute the source code of development releases (reference tags) every two months to users who will sign as Beta testers. An appropriate web form will be designed and implemented for this purpose (action 18.1).
• Support for development releases distributed to Beta testers will be limited and correctness not guaranteed, however feedback will be highly beneficial and welcome.
• Installations on AFS of development releases at CERN will be made available for the CERN users

Reports from experiments, institutes, user-representatives

• CMS
• Activity of comparison with test-beam data is ongoing
• It is foreseen to have most of the software infrastructure in place and ready for production between June-July 2002
• The use of XML for persistency of detector geometry description is under study, and a general code revision in OSCAR is planned
• Performance penalty was observed in Geant4 compared to Geant3, due to the usage of a single cut (in the order of 2 times slower)
• Completion of validation for EM physics and hadronics is foreseen for this year. It is planned to have Geant4 simulation replacing Geant3 by end of 2002.
• ESA
• Activity is ongoing in the implementation of two tools based on Geant4, used for shielding calculation and micro-dosimetry.
• Work is also progressing concerning internal conversion in photon-evaporation process.
• A problem was reported concerning "non-physical" results observed for particles approaching boundaries. P.Truscott will distribute the original report by F.Lei to the relavant WG coordinators. A meeting will be set up by J.Apostolakis by April 19^th (action 18.6).

Actions regarding Review Report

• It was noted that a good fraction of the actions proposed by the review Committee have been already implemented, others are already planned and will be most likely implemented in view of  the delta review in September/October. Remaining issues will have to be discussed and justified:
• Rec.3.1 - Planned. On progress.
• Rec.3.2 - Planned.
• Rec.3.3 - Postponed to next TSB meeting.
• Rec.3.6 - Mostly implemented already. A new tool from CMS will be available for release 4.1.
• Rec.4.1 - Mechanism already in place.
• Rec.4.2 - Procedure defined and soon will be implemented.
• Rec.4.3 - Mechanism already in place. Applied for release 4.0.
• Rec.4.4 - Revision of URD assigned to Architecture WG. (action 18.9)
• Rec.4.5 - Mechanism in place. Detailed review of documentation planned for this year.
• Rec.4.6 - Reasons why this may not work must be formulated and complemented with functional requirements (not requests!) which may be advanced by HURC.
• Rec.4.7 - Architecture WG has been nominated for overall architectural design issues and reference.
• Rec.5.3 - Hypernews fora now in place, Bugzilla, FAQs, patches ...
• Rec.5.4 - UR template and web form, HURC commitee in place.
• Rec.5.5 - Interaction with EP division at CERN, Hypernews in place.

Software Process

• Web tool for collecting and tracking new requirements
• preliminary prototype is ready and will be reviewed in the next days
• will be exposed for testing to Category Coordinators by April 19^th.(action 18.10)
• Automation of system testing - Tinderbox
• improvements and planned developments for Tinderbox have been completed. (action 18.11)
• it's also possible to display information about CPU time spent, and therefore tune the tool to monitor performance of  tests

Milestones 2002

• TOP Priority: testing suite for regression/statistical tests.
• Improvement of training kit: identify WG for managing, general editing and maintaining the training kit (actions 18.12, 18.13)

AOB

• Next TSB meeting: scheduled date, May 23^rd.
• Next Geant4 Developers Workshop will be held at CERN.
• Proposed date: September 30^th - October 4^th 2002.