HSF Weekly #47 25/02/16
Present: Torre, Andrea, Dario, Michel, Pere, Liz, David Rousseau
News
- Pere is invited to JLab in March, an NP computing futures workshop, to present a talk on ROOT. Will mention HSF in the presentation. (Amber sent an announcement of the workshop.)
- this meeting is rebranded as the ‘HSF weekly meeting’ (note the new indico page description)
- DIANA project announced
- Connecting the Dots workshop taking place this week, news next week
Discussed approaches to git workflow to maintain the website. For code, the pull request/merge workflow is high value and essential for collaborative work, for our website where updates can consist of e.g. one person writing and posting/revising meeting minutes it is less obvious, but the pull req/merge workflow should be welcome (and the single-contributor push workflow for the simplest cases should be tolerated).
Whatever the workflow, a desktop git app is a big help. SourceTree and the GitHub Desktop are two that people have success with (both work with any git repo).
May HSF workshop progress
Michel sent mails with logistics updates. Urgent now to announce it and get ready for registration. Setting up payment system connection etc. Info on accommodations and other logistics is together. Need a description of the workshop, will circulate a draft shortly.
Discussion on program and announcement. Plenaries to communicate progress and invited talks should be one element, hands-on hackathon type sessions should be another, we should have both.
We need to have a blocked out draft program as part of the initial announcement. Doesn’t preclude collecting comments and input from the community at the same time to consider when finalizing the program.
Suggestion agreed at least by some: include in the initial announcement a doodle poll to
- have people indicate which suggested topics they are most interested in
- invite input on further topics
- indicate preliminary intentions on participating: considering attending, remote participation, no plans to participate
In this way we can both get early feedback on the content and an early impression of attendance.
First major (plenary) session should be in the afternoon, to accommodate remote participants many time zones away, and local travellers who choose to travel on Monday.
Invited speakers – some solicitations have gone out.
Agreed to use the workshop planning googledoc to iterate quickly – before the weekend – on draft program and announcement, so the announcement can go out on Monday.
CHEP intentions: should plan a session, an iFB-like meeting for reporting progress, getting feedback, corrective actions etc. A few hours like Okinawa.
Round table for activities updates
TNs
- releasing the licensing note next week, hopefully
- packaging TN is complete, will circulate for comments to packaging forum and tech forum for any final comments, then make any changes arising and close it out.
Packaging
- working on specific ideas for hackathon at the workshop. Spack, coding sprint
Training
Dario - had a discussion thread on list. LHCb has starter kit website for analysis training. Exploring importing into WikiToLearn. Riccardo imported/transformed it into WikiToLearn, and created pdf versions. Found a few obstacles, including that sources then may be the LHCb originals and/or the WikiToLearn versions. Duplication isn’t sustainable. And there are sensitivities over intellectual property. Continuing the discussion. WikiToLearn approach is acting as a source repository for material, concentrating material in one place and lowering the bar to making contributions. Good topic for the workshop. Will send summary to the startup team.
Doing similar import to WikiToLearn exercise with ROOT.
Expect to invite LHCb folks to the workshop.
Logo contest
Has been announced. There is one website for submission, and a voting site where received material will be moved. Honor system voting.
Knowledge base
Torre gave a hepsoftware.org update:
- starting to use new ‘event’ category for entries (alternative to just adding an ‘event’ attribute on another entry), with this can flesh out info on the event within the app, relate to multiple other entries, apply tags etc. They are reflected in the event list the same as event attributes. Pere also using it, thanks!
- continuing to add entries opportunistically, doc tools, (CERN) CentOS, Spack, etc
- improved tag support, easily create arbitrary tags, describe in an associated entry
- beginnings of a wider range of visibility settings (rather than just visible or hidden): use cases are private-to-you entries (make your own KB, and publish from it what you like), group specific entries (e.g. an experiment-specific KB, experiment-level software meta-documentation, etc), followed entries (when rss is in)
- ‘people support’ activated in the back end, will hit the interface soon. Control of your profile, memory of your settings etc.
AOB
No AOBs.