PASREC Meeting Minutes

Minutes of July 21 PASREC Meeting - UNDER CONSTRUCTION

Due to another important event, the meeting began very late, and was attended by only Gaines, Canal, Kallenbach, Berman, and Kennedy. Rob presented his ROOT evaluation, and Philippe his Nirvana status. Refer to those documents for details. In addition, Gordon Watts e-mailed in a summary of his first experiences with ROOT.

ROOT discussion

The root discussion centered primarily on three "major" short term deficiencies (major wrt the pasfrg/passuma requirements):

Product management - No makefiles are currently included with the package, and The product is still supported under CMZ. Some will be included with the next release, but only a few and none for KCC.
There is no official committment to support the product. This could lead to the evolution of "FROOT", which we want to avoid.
CINT, the scripting language used with ROOT, has some serious problems. Some strategy will have to be employed to get it to a useful level. Rob presented three possibilities as shown in his slides.

There were also some long term issues raised, and announcement of additional participation in the evaluation. Rob's general observation is that ROOT is a viable candidate for short and long term solution.

Nirvana discussion

The Nirvana discussion was similarly focussed on the deficiencies wrt the pasfrg/passuma requirements, as detailed in Philippe's slides. Philippe offered estimate of around six months for the neccessary upgrades.

General points and follow-up

Irwin suggested that we continue with these evaluations in a more formal manner. In particular, we would like more detailed descriptions of the deficiencies of the two products, per the psafrg and passuma documents (i. e. using the checklists). Also useful would be reasonably accurate estimates of the time that will be needed to fix the deficiences.

Also of use would be a demonstration of ROOT by Pasha. The members will contact him and set up a time for a demonstration.

Irwin and Jeff agreed to put "checklist" versions of the pasfrg and passuma requirements documents onto the www ASAP.

Due to the limited attendance, we decided to hold two meetings next week.

Gordon Watts's ROOT observations

Rob's ROOT handouts

Philippe's Nirvana handouts

Next week

Two meetings (additional one Friday, Aug 1, 10:00 AM). The Tuesday meeting will be primarily a review and update of the ROOT and Nirvana status, and Friday will be discussions of MATLAB and OCTAVE.