Minutes of the 2 June 2005 TSB Meeting

Present:

Regular Items

• Minutes of the 17 March 2005 meeting were approved.
• Action items:
  • 27.4: G. Folger: archive of pictures will soon will be available. -> Provided since meeting.
  • 27.6: D. Wright: process/model/physics list catalog: in progress
  • 28.6: planning for users' workshop to start
  • 30.4: impact on UI of migration to sstream: no report (urgent: important for December release)
  • 31.4: problem with hadronic physics list: not accepted by system testing because processes are data members. Therefore new design feature dropped for release 7.1. Problem appears simple, if tedious, to fix. Action item (H-P. Wellisch): change physics lists to accommodate revised particles design, potentially by instantiating processes and models after physics list construction. Close item 31.4
  • 32.1 closed
  • 32.3 Some improvements in Windows platform testing (both hardware and process). Main improvement: shared testing process with another ITT member. Problems will be spotted more quickly.
  • 32.4 CLHEP 2.0 - open
  • 32.5 find out what technical forum requirment 3.13 really means: no new information
  • 32.6 list of journals from category coordinators - open
  • 32.7 circulate list of future scientific goals of collaboration: open
  • 33.1 closed
  • 33.2 category coordinators to include publication plan into working group plans: open
  • 33.3
  • 33.4 closed
  • 33.5 closed
  • 33.6 No resolution of who will support SUN which is still required by BaBar. Testers from several Geant4 sites access remotely one or more SLAC machines for running tests and checking problems that arise. D. Wright will discuss further with BaBar computing coordinator
  • 33.7 closed
• Issue raised: large number of queries in HyperNews user forum on hadronics appear unanswered. TSB encouraged all hadronics group members to respond to Forum questions.
• News from other meetings:
  • Notes from December 2004 LAPP Geant4 meeting are now available (see link in agenda)
  • No CB meeting since last TSB meeting

Release 7.1

• Status of release - G. Cosmo: First group of tags has been tested. A reference tag was released last week. EM physics tags now being tested. Friday is the deadline for this group of tags. CHIPS tags have arrived.
• The EM physics included with the hadronic physics lists is used incorrectly. A user reports that the muon resolution is incorrect when using hadronic physics lists and correct when using example N02. Potentially there are problems with electrons as well. This problem is part of the 7.0 release and needs to be fixed for the 7.1 release.
• CLHEP - G. Cosmo: some installation problems seen in 1.9.2.0. A bug fix for these will appear in release 1.9.2.1. The migration to CLHEP 2.0 will not involve many changes beyond the units names for classes in the Geant4 toolkit. Effects on user code are expected to be potentially larger.
• News of a pre-release of a library for vectors, physics vectors and rotation matrices by CERN/LCG personnel was reported (to be extended to random number generators as well). CERN experiments are evaluating this proposed library as a future alternative to CLHEP. The CERN Geant4 team is following developments. Potential future requests to support this library as a foundation library in place of CLHEP are anticipated and a proper evaluation will be planned in due time.
• Documentation - D. Wright: deadline for new documentation is June 17th.
• Data libraries and copyrights: according to ENDF database administrator, there is no problem with us using and re-distributing their data as part of the high precision neutron data library G4NDL. We are asked to add authorship identification and acknowledgement to our download page. The people at Oak Ridge may help with legal issues in this matter. We need to know which data comes from which database so all copyrights can be checked.
• Particles - M. Asai: dynamic particle creation is on hold until the issue with process and model instantiation in the hadronic physics lists is resolved. Other developments in the relevant categories were available for release 7.1 by retagging and retesting, leaving out the dynamic particle development.

New / Open Requirements

• User feedback from MC2005
  • Users would like more guidance and information on how to use Geant4. There appear to be too many choices of models, processes, geometry features, etc.
  • Establish a task force for providing collaboration-wide, comprehensive assistance and guidance for sensitive physics use cases.
  • Action item (person unspecified): establish a portal for recommending use of physics models and processes, to provide a common starting point for all use cases.
• Items from the Technical Forum:
  • A tag for polarized Rayleigh scattering is in the 7.1 release
  • A technical solution for the requirement of selective verbosity is now available and will be distributed to developers
  • No progress on treating particles with dipole moments
  • Adding data to G4NDL for rare elements: no new data in ENDF VII
  • Examples for R-hadrons are being worked on. These should not be extended examples.
  • Python User Interface needs protection from use of out-of-state methods
  • User limits per region are already implemented
• Request for industrial testing thread in HyperNews Forum: agreed that it should be set up, but with a 3-month trial period to see if it is used. Get a preliminary list of users' names.

Infrastructure and Platform Issues

• S. Sadilov: consider moving to Savannah as problem reporting system. Consider moving Geant4 services to an alternate site. Evaluate the effort required for this move.
• Savannah has non-sequential bug numbers, otherwise all of its services are OK. Action item (G.Folger): check with Savannah to see if we can get sequential numbering
• Current and future plans for platforms - S. Sadilov:
  • gcc 3.4 is working in 7.0. 32/64 bit tests in 3.2.3 are all OK, still testing in 3.4.3. 3.4.4 may be the actual compiler used
  • SUN: see action item 33.6
  • AMD is not under regular system testing, but is available
• New prototype Geant4 web page is now installed at CERN. 80-90% of pages converted to xhtml and now use new style sheets. TSB asked to use new pages for one month, report comments to D. Wright. The plan is to switch over to new pages by autumn.
  • D. Wright will continue to convert pages to new format
  • G. Folger will connect download page buttons and set up CVS for new web page directory
  • Can we convert auto-generated pages (e.g. problem report page) to new format?
• Requested a letter of thanks on behalf of collaboration to Ruth McDunn for design work on new G4 web page. Also agreed to put acknowledegment of Ruth on web page.
• Make sure there is room for dates of news items on new web page

Future conferences, meetings and tutorials

• 10th Collaboration Workshop and Conference - S. Incerti:
  • registration is now open - fee is 300 Euros
  • there may be financial support for French students who wish to attend
  • activities: wine caves, medieval village, dinner at castle, trip to coast
  • Saclay group requests letter of invitation (they will present work on hadronic models) for member to present model to collaboration meeting.

Collaboration Agreement and License

• Collaboration Agreement circulated for comment
• Official voter list is now being prepared. Eligibility is based on whether or not a member has been active during the last 18 months.
• Action item (person unspecified): identify geant4.com as not part of Geant4 collaboration

AOB

• Publications in progress - M.G. Pia: 2nd general paper has been circulated. The deadline for final comments is expiring, and submission will be made shortly.
• M.G. Pia: There are two new advanced examples:
  • Geant4 distributed computing environment
  • Physics validation of Bragg peak protons

Addendum: action items omitted during minutes-taking

• 34.1 - J.P.Wellisch to correct hadronic physics-list implementation to accommodate revised particles design, potentially by instantiating processes and models after physics list construction.
• 34.2 - category coordinators who are data providers, to provide to the Release Coordinator a short description about origins and credits for each distributed data library, to be put in the download web-page.
• 34.3 - M.Asai to figure out what to do with the "Space Applications" Hypernews Forum, currently empty.
• 34.4 - G.Folger to review the requirements and current status for the migration of Bugzilla to Savannah.
• 34.5 - J.Apostolakis (or S.Incerti) to make the public announcement of the Bordeaux Geant4 Workshop.