As promised in our last newsletter, we would like to update you on some more activities of the HSF.
Earlier this month, tracking software experts from the various experiments met to give a nice overview of the various software solutions that exist and to discuss possible common work. If you are interested in all the details, the agenda and minutes can be found here. Further follow up meetings are planned.
It is time for the HSF to have a logo! We are looking forward to receiving your ideas. Be creative! Use the Christmas break and prepare a contribution. If you are willing to contribute, look at the details.
One of the problems that has been solved too many times in our community is how to build, package and distribute the huge software stacks of our collaborations. In fact we aren’t alone in re-doing this work over and over again. Many competing projects are around in the open-source community. But is this actually necessary?
To understand this in our field, a few volunteers gathered together and created the HSF Packaging Working Group.
Up to now we met seven times (see below) and had a look at the various existing implementations. In total we looked at 7 HEP and 2 other open-source solutions. The question was: do we really need to use so many different implementations or are there good reasons for using so many solutions? We started collecting our findings. This resulted into a technical note.
In summary, it was soon clear that both requirements and solutions are similar. There is obviously no silver bullet among the existing tools that makes every collaboration entirely happy. However, we found a way to increase knowledge sharing between the experiments’ librarians. It is still a long way to make this actually happen, but something has started.
If you want to know more, join the packaging mailing list:
hsf-packaging-wg@googlegroups.com
Looking forward to your contributions and ideas!
| Date | Main topic |
|---|---|
| 25.2.2015 | Brainstorming session |
| 2.6.2015 | DUNE approach |
| 9.6.2015 | LCGCMake |
| 16.6.2015 | cmsBuild |
| 23.6.2015 | SciSoft, Contractor |
| 4.11.2015 | AliBuild |
| 18.11.2015 | Conda |