Charge

The committee is charged with providing support for scientific software packages for data simulation and analysis. Specifically the committee shall:

1. Define the relationship between ENP and IT in this area and develop policies and procedures to organize software support.
2. Identify software packages, both lab written and third party, that are commonly used for data analysis by laboratory users.
3. Identify or assign staff or users to be responsible for the installation and maintenance of the individual software packages.
4. Identify or assign staff or users to be responsible for the day-to-day support of the individual software packages.
5. Provide mechanisms for management and distribution of information, documentation and software packages and to give notification to the users when updates occur.
6. Provide mechanisms for the users to submit requests for support, manage those requests and identify responders.
7. Revisit all of these areas on a regular basis so that they continue to be supported.
8. Upon request by users evaluate whether new software packages should be added to the supported suite. 

 
A PDF of the memo that established the charge is linked to below...

2012-11-08 Full committee

Whiteboard snapshot

2012-12-04 IT sub-committee

Participants
Sandy Philpott (chair), Graham Heyes, Brad Sawatzky
Goal
Discuss integration of scientific software support with the IT help desk (CCPR system), documentation, notifications and version control.
Summary
Here is a summary of our sub-committee meeting Tuesday, addressing IT support for Physics software:

CCPRs 
-----

New category PHYSICS SOFTWARE added to CCPR system
 - assigned to IT staff - Sandy or other
 - email to Brad, Graham, Mark, Ole, Bob, Steve, Mauri, for starters
 - the email interface allows status updates - need to dig out the syntax details

Documentation
-------------

Suggest keeping the current location as a starting point, at
   https://wiki.jlab.org/cc/external/wiki/index.php/Physics_Applications

and updating this overview to include 1) an overview of the JLab support model for Physics software, 2) a short description of each support package and 3) a current link to its JLab documentation.

Any relevant pages found through google and web searches of the JLab site should be consolidated at this top level, and stale pages should be replaced with a permanent redirect to the main jump page.

We also discussed that the documentation, software, meeting minutes etc would be hosted on a website controlled by ENP.

Standard and multiple versions
------------------------------

Users on site have different methods of accessing software -- the JLab legacy "setup" and "use" commands, and the $JLAB_ROOT environment maintained by Mauri in /site/12gev_physics. More details are needed on running different versions than default, and identifying the PRO production versions.  How does /site/12gev_physics interact with the versions in /apps? Does it need to? These available access methods need maintaining and documentation. Do users still need "use" and/or "setup" ?  The choice between "setup", "use", and "/site/12gev_physics" may also impact who is in charge of the production software.

The production /apps/<software>/PRO version, or that in $JLAB_ROOT, should only change during a scheduled maintenance period that has been announced to users.

Notifications
-------------

General announcements about software updates and status can go to the jlab-scicomp-briefs mailing list.

2012-12-06 Full committee

Agenda

• Minutes of previous meeting.
• Presentation and discussion of charge.
  • Is there anything that we want to add to the scope?
  • What about software distribution?
• Presentation and discussion of progress by sub-group on documentation and feedback.
  • Can we start updating documentation and who will do it?
• Discussion of how to proceed with other items in the charge.
• Action items for period between this meeting and the next.
• AOB.

In attendance
Graham Heyes, Bob Michaels, Patrizia Rossi, Javier Gomez, Steve Wood, Mark Ito, Brad Sawatzky, Maurizio Ungaro, Sandy Philpott

Minutes

• The charge was presented and it was agreed that it was a good draft and should be forwarded to Rolf and Chip for approval.
• The committee felt that, since it drafted it's own charge, it should be free to amend the charge in future (subject to approval).
• Sandy presented  her minutes on the meeting of the group discussing integration with the help desk, documentation and IT specific issues.
  • The committee was impressed with the progress made towards using CCPRs for managing support requests. In particular one user had already asked for help via this mechanism and Maurizio was providing support for the user. So the system works!
  • Sandy will provide some "how to" and documentation so that people managing packages know how the to use CCPR system from the perspective of support provider.
  • How to proceed with documentation was discussed. It was agreed that data.jlab.org will be used for meeting minutes, notes and other documentation of a general nature and will be linked both ways to the existing IT scientific computing website. There was discussion on the issue of where documentation for the supported software packages should be hosted. There was tentative agreement that it does not matter where the package specific documentation resides if it is well clearly linked to from the general information on the IT and data.jlab.org sites. Various members of the committee will be given access to both sites so that they can add information.
  • The issue of setup and version control was discussed. A sub group of Maurizio, Bob and Steve will look into this.

Action items from the meeting

• Clean up data.jlab.org and start adding meeting information, notes and general information for the users.
• Sandy to provide CCPR information.
• Give the committee members editing access to the websites as required.
• Sub committee to look at software setup and version management will report next time.
• Next meeting will be in January.
   

2013-04-12 Full Committee

In attendance

Graham Heyes, Bob Michaels, Javier Gomez, Mark Ito, Maurizio Ungaro, Sandy Philpott

Action items from the last meeting

• Clean up data.jlab.org and start adding meeting information, notes and general information for the users.
  • Meeting info and agenda was added with some notes for users.
• Sandy to provide CCPR information.
  • Did this happen?
• Give the committee members editing access to the websites as required.
  • Nobody has asked for access to data.jlab.org, has anyone looked at the IT maintained pages?
• Sub committee to look at software setup and version management will report next time.

Agenda

• Reminder of minutes from last meeting.
• Continue the discussion of software setup and version management. (I recall that a sub group was supposed to look into this in more detail but haven't seen any emails on the subject, what is going on?).
• Discuss the CCPR system, how is this working? What else do we need from IT?
• Documentation progress. Access to websites etc, who needs it?
• Discussion points from committee members.
• How often should we meet?
• AOB

Minutes

• The CCPR system seems to have been working as advertised and requests from users have been handled.
  • Mark asked if it was possible to add people to CCPR thread (conversation). The example used was an expert who isn't normally on the list. Sandy replied that it isn't a feature of the CCPR system. The workaround is to remember that a third party invited into a CCPR thread will not automatically receive any replies sent to the CCPR system and they need to be forwarded manually.
  • Sandy pointed out that most members of the committee are not able to log into the web interface to CCPR that the IT division uses. Our interaction with the system is via email and Sandy moderates using the web interface.
  • Sandy will write a short email reminding committee members how the CCPR works in the context of requests for our help.
• Maurizio presented a scheme that he is using for software setup that allows for the management of several versions of the same package for different operating systems and architectures. Bob has been using a similar scheme for ROOT.
  • Mark commented on the usefulness of the existing scheme using the /apps directory structure. After some discussion it was agreed that, at least for the near future, any new scheme should be implemented so as not to break the old. At a future date the committee may want to declare that the old will become obsolete but that is open to debate.
  • Sandy and Bob both suggested that the old /apps scheme could be implemented using symbolic links to the appropriate directories in the new system.
  • Maurizio will work with Bob and then with the other software maintainers to implement his scheme in a consistent way for all of the supported packages.
• Documentation on this website data.jlab.org was discussed. The link on the IT wiki will be replaced with a link to this site. The maintainers of the software packages will receive instructions via email on how to access this site as an editor and add content.
  • Sandy gave a quick preview of the new SciComp site which will also use Drupal.
• Mark commented that we should make it clear to the users that this committee exists and tell them how to contact us with feedback.
  • The website will be updated so that it contains more useful content.
  • An email will go out to all users.
  • We should get a mention in the weekly JLab Brief email. 
• It was agreed that in the near term we should try to meet once a month.

Action items from this meeting

• More work on the web site functionality and content.
  • Email to the software maintainers with instructions on how to edit content.
• Email from Sandy on CCPR system.
• Maurizio and Bob to work on package and version management.
• Sandy, Bob and Maurizio to look into backwards compatibility with /apps.
• Add other supported packages to the scheme.
• Sandy to link IT wiki to this website.
• Draft an email and JLab Brief article for discussion and review next time.
• Meet in a month - added to Zimbra calendar for May 24th.

2013-07-19 Full committee

Action items from the last meeting

• More work on the web site functionality and content.
  • Email to the software maintainers with instructions on how to edit content.
• Email from Sandy on CCPR system.
• Maurizio and Bob to work on package and version management.
• Sandy, Bob and Maurizio to look into backwards compatibility with /apps.
• Add other supported packages to the scheme.
• Sandy to link IT wiki to this website.
• Draft an email and JLab Brief article for discussion and review next time.
• Meet in a month - added to Zimbra calendar for May 24th.

Agenda

• Reminder of minutes from last meeting.
• What has been done since the last meeting and what is left on the list?
• People should add documentation etc to the support website.
• Version management.
• AOB

Minutes

Action items from this meeting