The Architects Forum (AF) consists of the experiment architects and the applications area manager (who chairs it), plus invited participants. Architects represent the interests of their experiment and contribute their expertise.  Through this forum the experiments participate directly in the planning, management, and architectural and technical direction of applications area project activities.

The AF decides the difficult issues that cannot be resolved in open forums such as the applications area meeting. Most of the time, the AF will converge on a decision. If not, the applications area manager takes a decision. Such decisions can be accepted or challenged by the experiments. Challenged decisions go to the LCG Management Board (MB).

The AF meets every 2 weeks or so. Standard slot is Thursday 14:30-16:00 in 32-S-C22.  Minutes of AF meetings are public and are posted here.  The AF uses the (closed) mailing list project-lcg-af@cern.ch to communicate. Anyone can send mail to this list. The agendas of the AF meetings are also public.

 

Meetings

Links to complete AF meeting minutes and summaries of the primary items.

• March 21th, 2013
• Quick summary of the ROOT user's workshop
• Discussion on the release plans for ROOT 6.0. The experiments would like migration instructions as soon as possible.
• Discussion on support platforms and the strategy for reducing the total number.
  
• February 14th, 2013
• Information on the ROOT user's workshop.
• Summary of Annual Concurrency Meeting held at Fermilab.
• Fixing the contents of LCG configuration 64d. Full support for SLC6.
  
• Status of ROOT 6. De-scoped the functionality and delayed the release candidate.
  
• January 17th, 2013
• It was agreed to move the LXPLUS alias to SLC6 at end of April.
• Reviewed the long-term planning of platforms and versions. See the details in the minutes.
• MC Generators will be integrated with the set of LCG externals using the same build and deployment methods.
  
• Status of ROOT 6 release. First candidate release expected middle of February.
  
• December 6th, 2012
• Status of ROOT 6 release. First candidate release end of January. Final release few weeks later.
• Migration of Savannah to JIRA. Scripts are ready. Experiments will be contacted to plan the migration.
  
• Status of the MAC build service provided by IT
  
• November 8th, 2012
• Finished building all the externals with gcc 4.7.2 (compatible with c++11)
• Production platform for next year is SLC6 woth gcc 4.7. Experiments still using gcc 4.6 for the transition.
  
• ROOT 6 release is being delayed by some weeks. For information at the next meeting..
• October 10th, 2012
• Status of the Geant4 and ROOT major releases.
• Announcement of the ROOT workshop  on 11-14 March 2012 in Saas Fee.
  
• Progress in the experiments to validate new versions and platforms (SLC6, MacOSX, gcc4.7, etc.)
  
• September13th, 2012
• Virtual meeting with short reports from experiments and projects.
  
• July 5th, 2012
• Feedback from LHC experiments on the ROOT 6 plans.
  
• Reported incident on ROOT server.
  
• June 7th, 2012
• LCG_63 configuration is in preparation; it includes ROOT version 5.34 and SLC6 as new platform.
• Reported the status of the Mac build service request to IT.
• Current release plan of ROOT was presented. Feedback requested for next meeting.
  
• May 10th, 2012
• Request for a MacOSX build Service in IT has been submitted.
• Preparing configuration LCG 63 that will include binaries for SLC6.
• New JIRA service is now available. The idea now is to close the creation of new projects in Savannah and re-direct people to the new service. Feasibility study of the migration of Savannah to JIRA ongoing.
• ROOT and Geant4 finalizing June releases.
  
• April 12th, 2012
• Presentation on the latest progress in the XROOT client library. New notes taken during the discussion.
• Concerning the adaption of gcc 4.7,  it was decided to start experimenting with c++11 option first, and do a single build of all packages with gcc 4.7 with c++11 turned on.
• Plans for ROOT releases 5.34 (in May) and 6.00 (in November) were discussed.
• March 15th, 2012
• Programme of work discussion. The main JIRA stories for each project associated to the upcoming releases has been presented and discussed.
• Configuration LCG_62b in preparation. I will include  new version of Neurobayes and ROOT 5.32.2. New patch for LCG_61 will be also required by ATLAS.
  
• February 16th, 2012
• Discussion on the needs by the experiments of 32 bit binaries for recent LCG configurations and agreed strategy for providing them.
  
• Helge Meinhard summarized the status of the migration of the interface machines of CernVM-FS from the pilot setup in PH to IT.
• Status and plans for the new JIRA service in IT.
  
• January 19th, 2012
• Reported on the new series of meetings of the Forum on Concurrent Programming Models and Frameworks.
• Discussion on the priorities for the supported platforms (os and compiler versions) for this year.
• Started to introduce the plans for ROOT, Geant4, CernVM. Details will be needed to be added to JIRA.
  
• December 8th, 2011
• Summary of the workshop on concurrency that took place at Fermilab on 21-22 November 2011.
• New LCG configurations being released and prepared containing the latest releases of ROOT and Geant4.
• Released Geant4 9.5 and ROOT 5.32.
  
• November 10th, 2011
• Summary of the ROOT I/O workshop (slides)
  
• Windows platform is now declared a non-production platform 
• gcc 4.6 will be the next version of the gcc compiler supported the the AA packages.
• Release candidates for ROOT and Geant4 are made available to the experiments for testing.
  
• October 13th, 2011
• Status of configurations LCG 60d and LCG 61a.
  
• Notable progress of the CVMFS deployment in IT.
  
• Discussion of the deployment of gcc 4.6 and the interest of it by the experiments.
  
• September 15th, 2011
• Presented and discussed initial ideas for a proposal of development of a new data processing framework to fully support concurrency (slides).
  
• Experiments reported on their needs for the Intel icc compiler.
  
• August 18th, 2011
• Reviewed the stories for the persistency framework project (PF). They are available in JIRA.
• Fabrizio updated us on the transition towards EMI and its implications for the AA.
  
• Released LCG_61 configuration including ROOT version 5.30, updated some Python packages, and some cleanup on a number of packages.
• July 7th, 2011
• Reviewed the list of 'stories' scheduled for the June releases of ROOT and Geant4.
• Scheduling end-of-year releases. A late November release of ROOT with candidate releases from the  middle on November would probably work for ATLAS and CMS.
• New CernVM release is due for today. This is using the new build system (not using rPATH anymore).
• We will discuss the PF 'stories' at the next AF meeting.
• June 16th, 2011
• The dates for the next  AF meetings until the end of the year are July 7, August 18, September 15, October 13, November 10, December 8.
• Agreed to build ROOT 5.26.00f with the xroot fix to avoid high load on the Kerberos (KDC) service.  ATLAS can extract the couple of binaries for their ad-hoc deployment on critical cases.
• Decided to choose gcc version 4.5 as compiler for the SL6 platform for the time being despite the added complications for not choosing the native compiler version. 
• Benedikt together with Nils Høimyr( IT/PES) have prepared a proposal for an issue tracking service based on JIRA. 
• May 26th, 2011
• Agreed that the AF meeting will take place once a month on a fix time and weekday slot (Thursdays at 14:30) and a constant phase within the month.
• The work for the completion of the ROOT schema evolution has been broken down into a number of tasks, and their required effort has been estimated. Fons will send the list of tasks to the AF mailing.
• CwrnVM: demonstrator of executing Panda jobs on CernVM and having the output to EOS.
• May 12th, 2011
• NeuroBayes. Only one experiment (LHCb) is actually using the software and they ready to sign the license agreement. The text of the agreement has to be  adapted to reflect this.  Agreed to close this chapter at this moment.
• The migration from LCGCVS to CVS still not fully satisfactory. CMS suffered a lot from performance problems, although it is becoming better now.  
• New ROOT patch 5.28.00d was released in urgency during the weekend under the request of ALICE.
• CMS requested to have an evaluation of the effort needed to make the ROOT schema evolution mechanism usable.
• April 28th, 2011
• Fabrizio Furano has kindly agreed to replace Peter Kelemen as representative of the IT services.
• John summarized the long thread on the NeuroBayes license issue and look at options for how to proceed. Agreed to start a negotiation for a new clause granting access to the source code under certain conditions.
• Both ROOT and Geant4 teams have prepared new development releases of their software.
• LHCb reported on a long standing issue on memory usage by the persistency layer (POOL+ROOT) being a show-stopper for some of the LHCb data processing. The pursued solution would be to skip the POOL layer and go directly to ROOT.
• April 14th, 2011
• The migration for the CVS repositories to the AFS based service for the projects CMSSW, COOL, LCGTEST, PF is scheduled for Monday 18th of April at 9:30.
• NeuroBayes software. Experiments provided feedback to the proposed license agreement between CERN and Physics Information Technologies GmbH. The conclusion was proceed with the signature.
• Agreed to mark the initial planning stories as 'AF-agreed' and to be monitored from now on. Newly created ones will be added for discussion in subsequent meetings.
• CernVM-FS was discussed at several meetings last week (GDB, ATLAS software week, etc.). Overall very positive outlook and very likely that the CernVM-FS will be deployed to all Grid sites.
• March 31, 2011
• Discussed the response to the ATLAS Savannah feedback.
• Agreed with the deadline for comments or feedback from the experiments to the active "list of stories" till next AF meeting  (April 14th)
• Discussed AF problems perceived by the developers in the experiments
• March 17, 2011
• Report on the xroot new organization and developments plans by Dirk Duellman. He also informed us about the EOS (xroot disk pool) demonstrator status.
• Agreed on a proposal from Fons on how to release packages such as TVMA, RooStat and RooFit independently from ROOT.
• Requested the experiments to have a look at the list of 'stories' of the current program of work plans and provide feedback by next AF.
• Initiated a discussion on what is to be considered a 'patch release' in forthcoming LCG releases.
• CernVM-FS:
• Started the migration of the CernVM-FS repositories with the new structure.
• Production service hosted in the CERN computer center not yet ready.
• March 3, 2011
• The current list of 'stories' for each project will be made available before the next AF meeting.
• Configuration LCG_60a has been released and is currently in use by LHCb. The main causes of the additional delays incurred in the release of this configuration were analyzed.
• Second Geant4 development release of 2011 has been released.
• Initiated discussion on data compression algorithms and whether is required to study alternative implementations such as the ones provided by the Intel IPP library. 
• Agree to install the latest gcc 4.3.x compiler and use it in one of the LCG nightly slots.
• February 3, 2011 (Virtual)
• Reports from ROOT, CernVM, CMS and LHCb.
• February 3, 2011
• Selection of the JIRA tool to support project planning. Pursuing a production installation with definitive license.
• A number of actions has been identified in order to mitigate the causes of the delay (about 2 weeks) in producing the last two complete LCG releases.
• Agreed to continue supporting Windows for the rest of the year (on best effort) and let LHCb proof during this time that there is a clear benefit.
• January 20, 2011
• Call to the experiments to provide the 5 to 10 most important requests/requirements for each of the projects (Simulation, ROOT, SPI, PF). This request for input has also been extended to include the R&D projects (CernVM, Multi-core)
• CernVM version 2.2 was released before Christmas. There has been a lot of feedback during the holidays.
• Experiments stated their plans for releases to the upcoming data-taking period.
• Geant4 has migrated to SVN successfully. 
• December 9, 2010
• Presentation and discussion on the priorities and Organization of the PH-SFT group for 2011-2012.
• Experiments reporting on their plans for next releases of their off-line software.
• November 25, 2010
• Feedback collected by ATLAS in the Savannah service. The SPI project will digest the information and come with proposals on what is feasible to be implemented in terms of improvements.
• Advancement of end-of-year releases for ROOT and Geant4 from 2011 onwards. From the viewpoint of the experiments middle of November would be a good compromise.
• Possible restrictions of the CernVM-FS service during the end-of-the year CERN closure. The experiments will not be able to make new releases of the software during these two weeks. General agreement that all the experiments would be fine with this limitation.
• November 11, 2010
• G4 started with the procedure of the final tests (grid jobs) to be ready for the December release. Next week on Tuesday there will be a special Technical Forum meeting for the LHC experiments
• New version of RedHat 6 is now available.
• CernVM-FS very positive feedback from Babar usage for conditions data.
• October 28, 2010
• Geant4 Development release (ref 09) will be done this week.  This is the last one before the public release in December.
• October 14, 2010
• Reported on the main points from the latest ITSR meeting.
• New bug fix release ROOT 5.26.00e has been tagged by request of ATLAS.
• Installation of the latest versions for Doxygen, swig has been requested. 
• September 30, 2010
• ROOT production version 5.28 will be released on December 15th. It will include the improvements in the I/O subsystem.
• Discussion on the need for the RELAX libraries for STL containers.
  
• September 16, 2010
• Benedikt will be joining the AF from now on. He will be replacing Stefan at the end of the year.
• September 2, 2010
• Reported on the main points from the latest ITSR meeting.
• Released configuration LCG_59a. ATLAS satisfied.
• Requirements from the experiments for the new production version of ROOT
• August 19, 2010
• Coverity training week is taking place this week. Good feedback in general so far.
• Summarized the issue of the clash between the different implementations of the gssapi library.
• July 22, 2010
• Announced changes in the Geant4 Collaboration
• July 8, 2010
• Status of the preparation for releases LCG_59 and LCG58d. The time scale for these releases is few days.
• Chris Jones reports that Neurobayes is being used in LHCb. LHCb would be interested to provide feedback on their findings which should help on the currently ongoing evaluation process.
• ATLAS is integrating a release with LCG_59 (ROOT 5.26.00c) and Alice is currently testing new 5.27.04 ROOT release which is planned to be used on the analysis facility.
• June 24, 2010
• Multi-core and Virtualization WS feedback. A document summarizing the workshop is being prepared. It will be circulated to the AF for comments
• Plans for the Persistency Framework releases. 
• The Coverity training session has been fixed. The engineer will be at CERN from August 16 to 20.
• June 10, 2010
• Preliminary information about the plans for next major releases from the experiments, in particular their plans to migrate to new versions of ROOT.
• Discussed the possibility to migrate to Python 2.6. Windows of opportunity and plans for porting the Python bindings of the LCG tools.
• Virtualization and Multi-core WS organization: Confirmed speakers from ATLAS and CMS. The agenda is now completed.
• May 27, 2010
• Announcement that the report for the SFT group review is now available.
• Release LCG 56g has been done on May 11. The main motivation has been to fix the inconsistency of the expat package.
• The long standing problem is now completely fixed in the Oracle 11g client (OCI, OCCI, 32 and 64 bit) .
• April 29, 2010
• Proposed to enlarge the scope of the AF to include other projects/experiments in PH needing support for software and computing. General agreement.
• Neurobayes. Decided on the installation of this package in AFS from where any lxplus node we will be able to use it for evaluation purposes.
• Release of version 2 of CernVM based on on Scientific Linux 5. Collecting feedback before the production version is prepared.
• April 15, 2010
• Presented an alternative packaging of all LCG software merging all packages in a common 'flat' distribution tree with a very simple setup. Interesting for communities such as Theory developers.
• Configuration LCG_56f as been released, including fixes in POOL and COOL requested by ATLAS. Needed a new configuration based on LCG_58 to fix problem reported by LHCb with LFC in CORAL, when accessing the Oracle DB and overloading the server.
• Updated information on Coverity and Neurobayes.
• CernVM 2.0-beta is almost ready and should likely happen in the next days.
• April 1, 2010
• Configuration LCG_56f was requested by ATLAS, it was build yesterday and is ready to be used. It contains mainly some fixes to POOL and new versions of CORAL and COOL.
• Deploying the complete AA software stack for Theory. An initial version exists and feedback is positive. More details for next meeting. 
• Preparation of the 2nd Workshop on adapting applications and computing services to multi-core and virtualization has stated. The dates has been converged to June 20 and 21 (1.5 days).
• Interest from the experiments to use the Neurobayes software. Agreed that the negotiations of the conditions with the company is done in common for all experiments under the auspices of the PH-SFT group.
• March 18, 2010
• LCG_58b was released for LHCb. It contains a change in the Reflex interface package and some minor updates in the external packages.
• Work progressing on building a CernVM version based on SL5.
• Decided to hold a Workshop similar to last year one to review the progress made into adapting the computing services to multi-core and virtualized applications
• March 4, 2010
• SFT program of work residential meeting.
• The migration of the Savannah service to the new hardware was very smooth.
• Tests of the ROOT I/O performance for LHCb based on Rene's suggestions.
• February 18, 2010
• Released two new configurations LCG 58a and LCG 56e that incluces fixes to ROOT plugin for dCache and reverting to Oracke 11g client libraries.
• Agreed to incorporate test suites to test ROOT plugins such as xrootd and dCache to avoid the recent problems encountered by LHCb very late in their software deployment.
• Peter Kelemen reported about the upcoming RHEL 6 release.
• February 4, 2010
• Report on the Oracle-Opteron client library problem unveiled by ATLAS. A fix should be available by Oracle.
• Testing of ROOT 2.26 proceeds in ATLAS and CMS. The new LHC schedule after Chamonix may have an influence on its deployment.
• CernVM development version 1.5 is being finalized, it includes the new version of CVMFS.  There is some interest in using the file system in other contexts (distribution of calibration files, software installations in T1, etc.) 
• January 21, 2010
• The LHCC computing review will take place Tuesday 16th February. A status report from the Application Area has been requested and Andrea will be presenting.
• Interest by all experiments to use the coverity tool. Agreement on the proposed training that will give us unlimited access to the tool.
• LCG_58 configuration has been released.
• Experiments reported on their plans for versions/configurations they are going to use for the next LHC running period. Version stability is a common pattern.
• January 7, 2010
• Better understanding of the SELinux problems with icc compiler and Oracle libraries.
• LHCb requested a new configuration based on ROOT 5.26. Agreed to do it in a time scale of a week.
• Started to have pre-view with Python 2.6. Agreed to start an evaluation of what will be required for the Grid middleware.
• CernVM: exploring the option of a commercial content delivery network for the experiment software delivery.
• Re-starting the meetings of the multi-core R&D project.
• December 10, 2009
• Had a look at the new organization of the IT department and discussed the main changes in the groups nd how this affects the AF and the experiments.
• Status of configuration LCG_56d that was recently released.
• Latest news on the end of the year releases from Geant4 and ROOT.
• CMS reported progress on testing latest version of ROOT.
• November 26, 2009
• Clarified the reasons why the version of SVN client available in SLC5 is different than SLC4.
• AIDA EU-FP7 proposal was summarized. Software work package (WP2) proposes to develop a generic HEP geometry toolkit, and detector independent reconstruction tools.
• ROOT version 5.26 to be released on December 15th. It will be nearly identical in functionality to the release 5.25/04.
• Geant4 production version will be released on December 18th.
• November 5, 2009
• Configuration LCG_57 was released in Oct 19th. It contains new versions of all projects and is based on ROOT version 5.24.00b.
• Defining Configuration LCG_56d. Some externals will need to be updated, and minor versions of the AA packages still waiting for fixes from CORAL, POOL, and COOL. The initial urgency has been relaxed.
• Summary the status of the POOL project.  The conclusion is that POOL should stay in maintenance mode with the best strategy would be to get the ROOT part out of POOL and move it to the experiment's frameworks.
• Version 1.4 of CernVM was released end of October.
• October 3, 2009
• Discussion on how the  change the order in ROOT to take into account the LD_LIBRARY_PATH first.
• The development version of ROOT 5.25.2 has been just released. Rene summarized the main highlights.
• The new Oracle client library version 11.2 recently installed does not solve the problem with SELinux.
• September 17, 2009
• Discussion on how patches are applied on top of ROOT. Analysis of the list of bug-fixes introduced in Root from 5.22/00a to 5.22/00d to understand ways of improving adaption of new versions of ROOT by experiments.
• Additional SLC5 issues. The lxplus alias business seems now converged. No new date has been fixed to when the switch to SLC5 will be proposed.
• September 3, 2009
• Started a discussion on how to release/deploy physics analysis software packages layered on top of ROOT such as RooStat or RooFit. A couple of actions identified. There was no conclusion.
• No need to create a new configuration LCG_56d with only configuration fixes as it was originally requested by ATLAS.
• Decided to install and migrate to the recently released new version of the Oracle thin client 11.2, which includes all the required fixes and it also solves the problem with SELinux. The light version will be installed.
• ROOT includes now a new optimization schema for the size of the buffers associated to each branch in a tree.
• August 20, 2009
• Confirmation that the additional bit to be enabled in SELinux (allow_execheap)  will be required as long ATLAS needs to run old software and the problem with the Oracle client library is not fixed. No clear time scale yet.
• The release of the LCG_56c configuration was done successfully and well in time for the ATLAS releases.
• Agreed to prepare a new configuration LCG_56d consisting of only LCGCMT modifications but no other package changes.
• There have been some feedback about the SL4 compatibility meta-package. If anybody knows of something missing should inform Oliver Keeble.
• The proposal to migrate the Oracle client version to 11.1.0.7 presented by Andrea Valassi was agreed.
• July 23, 2009
• Inconclusive tests on what SELinux bits are required for Oracle library to work on SL5
• Details of the contents for the new configuration (LCG_56c) have been discussed and agreed.
• June 11, 2009
• Discussion on the SLC5 deployment at CERN and follow-up of the proposal of disabling SELinux. 
• Additional SLC5 issues and feedback from latest GDB. 
• Proposal for a LHC-wide tool to analyze the content of our applications heap. There was general agreement that the kind of information collected by the different tools is the similar. Agreed to setup a group of experts and discuss the details.
• The agenda for the Workshop on adapting applications and computing services to multi-core and virtualization is now complete.
• May 14, 2009
• Clarification on what should be the optimal communication channel for issues related to build servers.
• Reviewed additional pending issues for the SLC5 migration.
• Preparation of the Workshop on adapting applications and computing services to multi-core and virtualization.
• April 16, 2009
• Update of the ATLAS status and plans for the migration from the CVS code repository to the SVN one.
• Discussed and agreed the contents for the proposed new configuration (LCGCMT_56a).
• Reviewed additional pending issues for the SLC5 migration and how to improve communication. Missing recent update on the concrete plans of deployment of it at CERN.
• ATLAS reported a significant reduction of the virtual memory needs for 64 bit binaries such that they can run 64 bit applications on the Grid.
• April 2, 2009
• Discussion on the CVS to SVN migration of experiment's code repositories. Changes in the priorities and plans from the experiments due to the new LHC schedule.
• SLC5 migration issues:
• CERNLIB libraries has been re-compiled and tested by ATLAS.
• New failures of the FIO provided SLC55 lxbuild nodes for the nightly build service(s). Slow responsiveness.
• Relesed new version of gLite for SLC5 (64 bit)
• A lot of interest and nice feedback for both multi-core and virtualization R&D activities at CHEP.
• Starting to prepare the workshop on adapting applications and computing services to multi-core and virtualization.
• March 19, 2009
• A new Geant4 patch for 9.2 was released last Monday. CMS was waiting for it. Both ATLAS and CMS are now aligned to the same version of Geant4.
• SLC5 migration issues: 
• One of the biggest problem for the SLC5 migration is being the slow acquisition and correct configuration of the lxbuild nodes.
• The CERNLIB libraries need to be re-compiled with -fPIC to avoid the problem with SElinux detected by ATLAS.
• Experiment SLC5 migration status: CMS is prioritizing on the 64 bit version first. LHCb is running SLC5 native code on the nightlies. ATLAS is also currently integrating on the nightlies.
• March 5, 2009
• The ROOT development release 5.23/02 was announced. ALICE is already running on it in production. LHCb and ATLAS are currently testing directly the head revision. A new ROOT web page based on the Drupal content management system is in place.
• Additional SLC5 issues such as the cron/cvs patch, the Oracle client fix, CERNLIB problem were discussed.
• ATLAS decided to upgrade the simulation to Geant4 9.2. The production releases for ATLAS and CMS have been delayed for 2 and 4 weeks respectively. 
• February 19, 2009
• Discussed the request to include the KSM module as part of SLC5. No conclusion was reached. The idea of having a Workshop to discuss multi-core and virtualization issues was very well supported.
• Reviewed the list of pending issues related to the migration to SLC5.  The migration of the majority of the CERN resources to SLC5 at the time scale of April is probably fine. The lxplus alias could be changed sometime between April and September (before the experiments startup).
• Every experiment is interested on a transition to SLC5/64bit of the Grid resources as soon and as short as possible.
• LCG_56 configuration was released last Friday. ATLAS has already taken it and there are no problems so far.
• February 5, 2009
• LCG_56 configuration was basically ready for release. Stefan summarized the latest steps to be taken.
• The release of Boost 1.38 was confirmed to be ready by Monday, therefore in time for be incorporated into the LCG_56 release.
• ATLAS reported problems with their candidate release. They have appear after the bunch of fixes to ROOT has been made available, together with a change in the API for CollectionProxy, and that more experts are making final validations.
• CMS reported on their tests of the new ROOT and POOL. Things look fine in the simple tests being done and all problems has been fixed as far as they can see. 
• LHCb is testing a lot of things at once (including new version of Gaudi). They can run applications with the preview release of LCG_56.
• January 22, 2009
• Concerning the deployment of SLC5, CMS has a problem with changing the lxplus alias as it has been initially announced.
• Concerning the LLVM proposal, we concluded that we need to do the validation of CINT7 in the next few months and take a decision on the new project a bit later.
• Status of LCG_56 configuration. Reported about the reminding issues needed to be solved before the release. This one is still expected by the beginning of February.
• January 08, 2009
• Agreed on a presentation for AA in the forthcoming LHCC mini-review of the LCG. Pere will be the presenter and he will collect a few slides from each of the projects.
• Dirk reported about the review of Castor that has been taken place and the plans for its future. Notes taken during his explanations. For more detailed information pointers to presentations about the subject in various meetings and conferences has been provided.
• Status of releases: LCG_55c is done. LCG_56 (pre-release) is ready. A number of issues have to be fixed before the production release aimed at end of January, beginning of February.
• SLC5 migration:
• AF supported the proposal to not include CERNLIB part of SLC5 standard installation.
• A number of issues need to be understood about the differences between RedHat provided gcc compilers and the ones currently in use.
• Understanding the deployment plan for SLC5. Clarifications will be asked to IT/FIO.
• Agreed that all the LCG-AA software should be supporting the 2.X version of CLHEP and not only the version 1.X.
• December 11, 2008
• Reported the feedback from experiments on the LCG_56 preview (new ROOT version). ATLAS a long way to go to provide feedback, LHCb well advanced and good so far, CMS could not test latest previews, and Alice fully validated.
• Reported on the status of the Grid client libraries for SLC5, gcc-4.3 and Python 2.5 and the tests from the experiments.
• Decided to include new version of CLHEP (1.9.4.2) in LCG_56.
• Stefan reported that the migration of the ATLAS HypeNews items to SharePoint is completed.
• Novembe 27, 2008
• Report of the progress of validating SLC5 by the experiments. 
• A number of small problems are being studied.
• A new requirement was identified: to be able to build SLC4-compatible binaries using SLC5 systems.
• The ROOT problem in the area of Reflex that renders unusable the recently released development version of ROOT 5.21/06 was discussed.
• In the context of the multi-core R&D project, Vincenzo reported on the encouraging results of the tests of "ksm" (shared memory kernel module).
• A new patch version of CernVM v1 is ready for release.
• Novembe 13, 2008
• Configuration LCG_55b (de-sealed) was finalized and announced last week.
• Finalized the contents and supported platforms for configuration LCG_56. A pre-release should be made available towards the end of November and the production quality one mid-January.
• Reported the progress for the introduction of SLC5. The ATLAS compatibility tests on hold due to an AFS problem. The SLC5 platform should be available in the nightlies from now.
• October 30, 2008
• Configuration LCG_55b (de-sealed) is almost ready with some problems in building COOL and other packages on VC7.  The idea is to include a new ROOT bug-fix version (5.18.00f) and have it ready early next week. This is compatible with the ATLAS and LHCb needs.
• SLC5 software migration strategy
• Encounreted problems with SLC4/gcc-3.4 binaries in compatibility mode (phase 1) with the SElinux module and possible memory leak.
• Agreed to choose gcc-4.3.2 as the official compiler for SLC5 (phase 3), together with python-2.5, therefore requiring support for such configuration.
• Reported progress on Windows VC++ 9.0 and gcc-4.3.2 ports of the LCG-AA software.
• The first release of the CernVM software, 1.0, is now ready and should be available starting from October 31st, after 6 months of development.
• October 16, 2008
• LCG_54h will be released this week. The de-sealed version (LCG_55b) is not urgently needed and will be done later.
• The 2009 "production" version of AA software stack is requested by mid-January 2009. This request should not be a big problem as long as the integration tests by the experiments start as soon as a stable version of ROOT is made available (end of November). The final production version of ROOT 5.22 is foreseen by December 15th.
• Discussed the inclusion of SLC5 as new platform. A plan of action with 3-4 steps have been defined. The major decision still pending is to know if SLC5 binaries should be produced with the native compiler gcc 4.1 or to jump directly to gcc 4.3.
• The two proposals circulated by Stefan (CMT tag name unification, and procedure to manage software installations) has been agreed.
• October 2, 2008
• Adapting to the new LHC schedule.
• Experiments would like to have the full software stack ready by end of January, such that they can start building their software that will be used in production during 2009.
• To avoid long integration times with a new version of ROOT,  CMS will build a release with the current ROOT development version 5.21.04.
• Geant4 9.2 release is scheduled for December.
• New configuration in preparation (LCG_55b). It will have some some minor changes in the externals, include a separated release of RooFit based on ROOT 5.18 and changes in the Grid packages.
• September 18, 2008
• Conclusions from the SubVersion presentations in AA meeting. Experiments will only plan the migration from CVS to SVN during the 2009-2010 winter shutdown.
• A new correction for Geant4 version 9.1 (patch 03) will be released this week.
• Reported progress in the VC9 port. The main remaining issues are been solved, but several errors are still observed at runtime.
• Small report from both R&D projects: virtualization and multi-core.
• September 4, 2008
• Discussed a new proposal for the distribution of the middleware software. A pull mode, in which sites can decide what they want to install and the possibility to have parallel installations with different versions, was favored. Oliver will provide the tarballs to SPI to see how these can be integrated with the rest of the AA software.
• The development version of ROOT 5.21/02 was released at the end of August. Contrary to what was planned, this release does not include the new automatic schema evolution.
• Some progress reported on the VC9 port. Problems with COOL and CORAL has been found in a number of tests failing at runtime.  
• August 7, 2008
• A SVN session will be organized in the first AA meeting in September.
• Experiments have released the software versions that will be used for the first data.
• CernVM version 0.7 was released. It comes with a new implementation of the file system with some extra goodies such as the possibility to mount the file system in read-write mode.

• July 24, 2008
• Andrea Valassi replaces Dirk Duellmann as leader of the Persistency Framework project. 
• A presentation in a post-C5 meeting of a proposal for a new SVN service and closure of the existing CVS service has caused some reaction from the experiments. The post-C5 meeting was felt not to be the correct method to communicate to the experiments. A presentation of the proposal will be scheduled in a AA meeting.
• Configuration LCG_55a has been released. This new configuration includes the new version for HepMC, which now can be the same for ALTAS and LHCb
• All the experiments are releasing their software versions that will be used for the startup. Only fixes to important bugs will be incorporated. In addition, they are also preparing major versions to be put together later in the year.
• Virtualization project. Released version 0.6 of CernVM
• Multi-core project. Progress in multi-threaded Geant4 and investigating various memory allocators for multi-threaded environments. 
• June 12, 2008
• The ROOT release scheduled for 26 June will not include the new extension of the schema evolution. The introduction of the new schema evolution functionality will be done by the end of August. The production release is expected in December.
• Status of  configurations:
• LCG_54g has been released, LCG_55 can go immediately undoing the upgrade of the version of Boost that did not work straight away. 
• Boost 1.35 will be added in the "dev" nightly slot to prepare for its inclusion in future configurations.
• There will not be a new production version of Geant4 in June this year.  There will be instead a beta release (9.2-beta) which will be made available for testing to users at the beginning of July.
• May 29, 2008
• Preparing in parallel the LCG_54g configuration (including ROOT 5.18/00d ) and configuration LCG_55 (including "de-sealed" versions of POOL/CORAL/...)
• Reported of the ongoing effort for reducing the complexity of the POOL package; summary of of series of meetings with representatives from the experiments that has been held to know about their use of POOL.
• Decided for the moment to go with gcc 4.1 for the SLC5 platform, which is the default compiler version. 
• The new 0.5 release of CernVM is under preparation; the release includes small fixes and extra packages on request from LHCb, addressing SLC4/5 compatibility libraries.
• May 15, 2008
• A new version of the specs for the enhanced ROOT schema evolution has been made available. People should circulate it to experiment experts through their distribution channels. There will be a presentation to one AA meeting later but comments/feedback should be sent to Rene directly.
• The software for the new configuration LCG_55 (desealed) is in good shape. It was decided to make the release of it by the end of May. Will need to maintain the two configurations 54 and 55 in parallel until ATLAS will make the transition.
• New releases: 
• Development release of ROOT 5.19/04 is now available.  See release notes for the details. 
• New patch for Geant4 9.1 has been made available. See release notes for the details.
• Some progress reported on new platforms SLC5, MacOSC 10.5 and VC9.0.
• The progress of Virtualization project (CernVM) was reported.
• April 17, 2008
• Agreed to prepare a new LGC configuration fixing the problem of the dCache installation together with a number of version changes in external packages such as gfal, Castor, lcgutil, etc.
• Asked experiments if support for ROOT 4.x files by POOL is still needed. This would allow some cleanup in RootStorageSvc, thus simplifying its long-term maintenance. Waiting for ATLAS to give the green light.
• LHCb and ATLAS would like to have one more complete release by June with the 'de-sealed' version of POOL/COOL/etc, but no change in the ROOT version. They do not plan to use the June release of ROOT in production until next year, although tests of the improved schema evolution will be performed in order to provide feedback.   
• The kickoff workshop for the R&D projects was commented.
• April 3, 2008
• New configuration with fixes to POOL has been produced (LCG_54d). It includes also a new nersion of dCache.
• Large progress reported in removing the SEAL dependency (de-sealing) of the POOL packages. POOL itself is completed. CORAL is not not finished but very advanced. COOL still have very few things to be decided.
• Changes in the Nightlies
• Building SEAL will be taken out of the "dev" slot.
• The "dev1" slot in the that is dedicated to patches to LCG_53 will also  be stopped.
• Building for SCL3 will also be stopped since no new requests are expected from experiments.
• Requested by LHCb (Dirac) to provide a statically linked version of Python in the release area.
• March20, 2008
• Circulated the very initial version of the note describing the specs for the advanced ROOT schema evolution provided by Rene.
• Initial discussion whether or not the experiments would migrate to ROOT 5.20 (summer version) and what would be the work required for it. A major release of the POOL projects removing the dependency to SEAL is already scheduled.
• Compiler versions:
• Since the 'official' gcc 4.3 has been released, it was decided to jump directly to it skipping 4.2. A preview in the nightlies will be setup soon.
• For windows, despite of some concerns we agreed to move to VC 9.0  in a time scale of few months.
• Reported the status of the R&D projects. Finalizing the agenda of the kickoff workshop.
• March 6, 2008
• Reflex API change proposal. Need to have the documentation of the actual API proposal to make things concrete and see what is the impact of these changes would have in the client code. Header files for the new API would be sufficient as specification.
• The actual development work for the combined RFIO client library have not yet started.
• Two new bug fix configurations 54b and 54c had been released. 
• All experiments have plans to converge with Geant4 version  9.1 in the long term. The June release of Geant4 may be only a bug fix release on top of 9.1.
• The migration towards MacOSX 10.5 (leopard) has started with the newly available build server. The platform tag was agreed to be "osx105_x86_64_gcc40"
• February 21, 2008
• The ROOT interface to the Qt GUI toolkit version 3 (Qt3) will not be supported starting from next production release. Only Qt4 will be supported.
• Agreed that Architects Forum will also monitor/drive the developments for the two new R&D projects hosted in the PH-SFT group. Both project leaders will be invited to the meetings and short status reports will be given regularly.
• LCG_54a configuration was almost ready. It includes some changes with respect LCG_54: ROOT 5.18.00a, CORAL 194, COOL 231, POOL 342, GSL 1.10. A new patch configuration will be prepared later to include new version of COOL.
• Experiments are picking-up configuration LCG_54(x) for building their production releases during the next weeks.
• February 07, 2008
• Requested to experiments their support needs with respect  the version of the Qt GUI toolkit and its interoperability with ROOT.Decided that if no reason is identified from ATLAS or CMS to keep Qt3 support, then ROOT will move to Qt4 exclusively.
• Discussion about CORAL server development. Decided to go ahead with the proposal and develop the prototype. This prototype needs to be delivered quickly because of the urgent needs from ATLAS online.
• New configuration in preparation with latest bug fixes. ATLAS would like to defer the release of LCG_54a for a week. This was agreed and the target date for the bug/fix release has been fixed for February 18th. 
• January 24, 2008
• John Apostolakis made a summary of his analysis of the effects the DoE budget cut in SLAC has for Geant4. He also has written a memo with more details and has been sent to ATLAS and CMS management.
• The release of LCG_54 configuration went well in general. It was agreed that further and more extended testing will be needed in the future.
• There will be some changes in the nightlies with new slots for patches of LCG_54 and new version of gcc compiler.
• Dirk presented the CORAL server proposal in last AA meeting. The experiments should comment the proposal. The  decision eventually could be taken at the next AF.

• January 10, 2008
• The production release of ROOT scheduled for next Wednesday 16th assuming all pending problems are solved and no new ones are detected by the ongoing experiment validations. A couple of days later we should get the complete LCG_54 release.
• Python 2.5 has been validated and is going to be added into the candidate configuration for release ("dev" slot in the nightlies)
• Agreed to introduce MacOSX 10.5 (leopard) as new platform after the release of LCG_54
• Agreed to start working for gcc 4.2 after the release the LCG_54. Eventually we will drop gcc 4.1 after complete software stack has been validated with gcc 4.2.
• Suggested to have Geant4 and Genser MC generators as part of the nightlies to facilitate the validation by the ATLAS.
• December 13, 2007
• Witek Pokorski will be replaced by Alberto Ribon as project leader of the MC Generator services from in February 2008.
• The release of the production version of ROOT will be delayed until January 16th. Meanwhile a development release (5.17/8) will be made available this week as the 'release candidate' for the experiments to validate. Only bug fixes will be committed in the code repository.
• LHCb tested their software using the nightlies and found a blocking problem concerning reading old data files. A fix has been prepared and is being tested.
• Geant4 version 9.1 will be released on December 14th as planned. The validation of the hadronic physics has been done with 5000 jobs submitted in the Grid. It is about half the number of jobs compared with last time mainly due to the reduced computing resources with SL4 available for Geant4.
• A new request will be issued for the Castor (rfio) client libraries for MacOSX and Windows. These libraries are needed when experiment software is executed in these platforms for data analysis. 
• The next LCG configuration (LCG_54) will be based on Python 2.5. It was agreed to add Python 2.5 into the "dev" slot starting from tomorrow.
• Quick update on the ROOT status of schema evolution and support for split mode. A specs document is still planned before the end of the year.
• November 29, 2007
• Positive feedback from the last LCG Comprehensive review. 
• The integration of the configuration LCG_54 (preview of the ROOT production version) is progressing well. The "dev" slot in the nightlies is slowly converging.  The final list of changes in external packages versions will be circulated for comments soon. New versions of POOL, CORAL and COOL are foreseen.There will be an announcement when the slot is completed such that the experiments can do their validation of the pre-release.
• The conflicts between Globus distributed with the Application Area and in the LCG UI detected by ATLAS seem to be solved with the recent changes made in LCGCMT.
• The decision to upgrade to Python version 2.5 was postponed until January when ATLAS would have concluded their tests.
• Discussed how the 64 bit version of the Grid Middleware in WN (i.e. clients) will affect the experiments.
• November 15, 2007
• Finalizing the talks for the LCG Comprehensive review. The presentations would need to be circulated to the AF mailing list as soon as possible. Concerns expressed by the program of work presented by CORAL.
• Configuration LCG_53f has been made containing new versions of CORAL, COOL and RELAX. This is the first time the release has been build by the SPI team. There were same glitches that were solved in less than 24 hours.
• Decided to make the nightly slot 'dev' fully working as a preview of the December releases including ROOT production version 5.18. This is to be used by experiments to validate the release. The support for SLC3 and gcc32 will be removed from that release.
• Scheduled end of the year releases for ROOT and Geant4.
• October 18, 2007
• Finalized agenda for the LCG comprehensive review scheduled for Monday 19 November.
• Released ROOT version 5.17/04. Rene will present  the new developments in the next AA meeting.
• Configuration LCG_53d was finalized. Starting to work for LCG_54 that includes new version of ROOT.
• LHCb asked about the status for discontinuing the SEAL pluging manager. The milestone was scheduled by end of November but this is not realistic taking into account the available developers. The current idea is to move the milestone to end of March 2008.
• October 4, 2007
• Configuration LCG_53c was released with the new version of gfal 1.10.2
• Configuration LCG_53d will we released next week with a number of agreed changes needed by ATLAS and CMS in POOL, CORAL and POOL. See the minutes for the details.
• The proposal to support complex schema evolution in ROOT has been circulated by the experiments to their experts and meetings to discuss concrete use cases are going to be organized soon.
• September 20, 2007
• Agreed on the agenda for the next AA session of the LCG comprehensive review scheduled for Monday 19 November.
• Announcement  that ROOT have migrated the code repository from CVS to Subversion (SNV)
• The proposal to support complex schema evolution in ROOT was presented and initially discussed. It was agreed that there will be a round of discussions with each of the LHC experiments and POOL to confront the proposal with the concrete use cases. The goal is to come with complete specifications of the API by December 2007, and an implementation by June 2008.
• Agreed with the next series of configurations:
• LCG_53c. Will be made as soon gfal 1.10.2 is made available.
• LCG_53d. A complete release of the MacOSX (intel) stack for all projects, including requested bug fixes in COOL and CORAL by ATLAS and CMS.
• LCG_54. Preview configuration including ROOT 5.17/02 
• July 26, 2007
• MacOS (intel) binaries are being build in the "dev1" slot on the nightlies and  they look in pretty good shape.
• The experiments will wait for ROOT development release 5.17 scheduled end of August to integrate it in their releases.
• Decided to prepare new configuration LCG_53b with the necessary changes to cope with gcc 4.1 and MacOS(intel) and compatible with current experiment's versions. Changes in versions of GCCXML, RELAX, CLHEP are expected.
• Decided to discontinue MacOS(powerPC) and SLC3(debug) as binary platforms for the next releases and introduce MacOS(intel) instead.
• July 12, 2007
• One limited duration (LD) position has been announced in the IT/PSS group to work on POOL/CORAL.
• Discussed the two R&D proposals that are being considered in the PH department in the area of application software for the experiments. 
• Started a campaign to make the nightlies for POOL and CORAL "green". The MacOSX(intel) as a platform for the nightlies is coming soon.
• The configuration LCG_53 is almost ready. Only  COOL is still missing, which is going to be build very soon. ATLAS is waiting for it.
• June 28, 2007
• Both ROOT 5.16 and Geant4 9.0 are about to be released. They will be announce at the end of the week.
• Decided to prepare  configuration LCG_53 including the new version of COOL and we ready in one week.
• June 14, 2007
• The installation of the Grid client libraries in the LCG external area is now completed and has been tested successfully by LHCb. It contains the SL4 and SL3 versions but the SL3 has not been certified. Experiments should make sure that the entire set is deployed/installed to the grid nodes and not do rely that the installed versions will be compatible. No actions pending.
• There have been some troubles in the nightlies during last week, but the system is stable again now. A slot with gcc 4.1 will be open.
• The production version of ROOT 5.16 due for June 27 will be validated with only the LCG nightlies including Gaudi. AA projects should check careful the results of the "dev" slot that is being build nightly with the candidate release of ROOT. 
• No major problems with the validation of Geant4 9.0. A candidate release will be made available early next week to the experiments.
• The new release of COOL is expected to improve the performance scalability for the IoV lookup. ATLAS would like to have this new release of COOL at the latest the first week on July.
• A summary of the special meeting that took place among the specialists on the integration problems of the DPM and RFIO plugins for ROOT and GFAL was presented. The AF endorses the conclusions and proposed actions.
• May 31, 2007
• The integration problems of the DPM and RFIO plugins for ROOT and GFAL were discussed. A document describing the problem and possible solutions is being prepared by Flavia Donno. A meeting with the experts will be organized to discuss the proposed solutions.
• A LCGCMT configuration containing interface packages to the new installed Grid s/w in /afs/cern.ch/sw/lcg/external/Grid/ has been prepared and is currently tested by LHCb.
• The list of POOL/CORAL tasks and their status was circulated by Dirk. Having finished the ATLAS request, the development team has started handling the CMS items.
• ROOT 5.14.00f patch version was released Wednesday morning. See list of changes. The ROOT pro release 5.16 is scheduled for June 27. 
• Next major release Geant4.9.0 is scheduled for end of June.  A Geant4 validation suite with 10000 jobs will start for about 3 weeks on the GRID.
• May 3, 2007
• Nightly builds for windows status: the complete software stack can be build, what remains is the move of the build results to AFS space.
• Agreed to open a slot in the nightlies to exercise the compiler gcc 4.1. It may require to provide binaries for the externals for this compiler.
• The repository of the Grid client libraries in AFS is in place and Stefan is working on a version of LCGCMT to make use on these. LHCb will be testing the installation once the LCGCMT package has been adapted.
• A number of new versions for externals has been requested (Boost, Python, Qt4, kcachegrind, etc.)
• Presented plan for CORAL, POOL and COOL. Requested feedback from experiments.
• April 5, 2007
• Preparation of LCG_51 configuration. New versions of frontier and dcache being installed.
• New requests from CMS to ROOT for the schema evolution support and the customization of the compression algorithms.
• March 8, 2007
• Oliver Keeble reported on the progress made recently on the installation of client libraries of GFAL and LFC for the SL4 architecture. A proposal with detailed information for doing this installation would be circulated.
• Configuration LCG_50b with a number of bug fix releases will be released, a list of proposed changes had been sent. The release date of  COOL 2.1.0 has been proposed for March 23.
• The availability of the client library  for Dcache for SL4 needs to be checked as soon as possible. 
• March 1, 2007
• The client libraries for GFAL, LFC has been built for SLC4 but they are not yet ready to be distributed and installed to the LCG external area.
• The priority for the common RFIO library between DPM and Castor needs to be reviewed. ATLAS  relies on it for sites with a mixture of Castor and DPM. 
• The first batch of tests for CORAL and POOL are now available as part of the nightlies. The ROOT project will also provide tests for the nightlies after the ROOT workshop.
• Configuration LCG_50a. This is a bug fix configuration based on LCG_50 including bug fix releases of ROOT and CORAL, and some patches on LCGCMT. It is being used by LHCb and ATLAS. 
• Agreed in the installation of Java and associated  libraries required by ATLAS in the LCG externals. SPI is going to provide space in AFS and guidelines for the installation.
• February 8, 2007
• Line management changes: Pere Mato is replacing John Harvey as PH/SFT group leader from the first of February. Andreas Pfeiffer will be leaving the SFT group and joining the CMS experiment.
• The proposal that Stefan Roiser takes over from Andreas Pfeiffer as SPI project leadership was agreed by the AF.
• Oliver Keeble from the LCG Grid Deployment (GD) area will be the link-person between the AA and the GD with the main goal to improve the communication between AA, GD and the experiments.
• Slow progress in the nightly build system  concerning the incorporation of CORAL/POOL tests and support for the Windows platform.
• ATLAS reported the IO/Reflex problem in the in the Muon event model. The problem has been fixed and a new patch of ROOT is going to be released.
• Problems has been reported with CERNLIB on SLC4 64-bit (by using the h2root utility) but those has been solved.
• New externals:
• Agreed the installation of Qt4 for Windows into the LCG external area.
• No objections to install the fftw package and build the corresponding ROOT plugin.
• New Python modules have requested: NumPy and MathPlotLib.
• January 25, 2007
• Ian Bird and Les Robertson informed on request builds of GFAL, LFC client libraries for SLC4. The problem (at least for GFAL and LFC) is the external dependency on VDT.  It is being discussed in the WLCG workshop this week. No time estimate yet.
• Nightlies
• Port to CMT of CORAL has been completed. The libraries and the tests are built successfully with CMT every night, but the tests are not yet adapted to QMtest.
• Agreed to use "dev1" slot for the preparation of LCG_50 and start freezing the versions of ROOT, SEAL, CORAL, etc.
• Agreed to add an optimized platform in addition to the debug ones in one of the slots.
•  LCG_50. Target date for the release is the beginning of next week. COOL and CORAL will be build with CMT and POOL with SCRAM.
• January 11, 2007
• The nightly build system is currently operational, although not yet complete, it is giving already good service. Two slots are currently defined "dev" and "dev1". The two most urgent next steps are the inclusion of the tests of CORAL/POOL as part of the nightly checks and the Windows builds.
• Two new configurations in preparation LCG_49 and LCG_50. Both include the latest patch from ROOT 5.14.00. LCG_50 will include in addition COOL 2.0.0, which is being tested by LHCb and ATLAS, and new a version of Frontier client.
• The SLC4 migration of the CERN/IT central services has been delayed by 2 weeks. The builds of GFAL, LFC client libraries for SLC4 are not existing and this will prevent to release any AA software component that depend on them.
• December 14, 2006
• Preliminary report by Philippe Charpentier on the outcome of Grid client libraries and tools meeting that took place between some members of AA, LHCb and Grid deployment with the idea to install all the Grid client libraries and utilities on the LCG externals area as it has been done with some of them already.
• The overall status of the AA nightly builds is that it is basically is working. Gaudi has also been included.
• The basic testing of the ROOT production release at the level of what can be done in the AA has taken place with the help of the nightlies. Experiments has not done thorough validation due to several reasons.
• New production versions of ROOT and GEANT4 will be released as scheduled this week.
• November 30, 2006
• Discussed the proposal for the migration of the SEAL functionality which is still left in the project:  component model, plugin management and foundation libraries. The proposal  was endorsed by the AF.
• A. Pfeiffer reported on the progress made in the nightly build system and conversion to CMT. The system is basically ready for the experiments to test. 
  The page http://lcgapp.cern.ch/spi/aaLibrarian/nightlies/index.htmlcontains the information of the current nightlies and their status. The binaries are installed in AFS at /afs/cern.ch/sw/lcg/app/nightlies/<slot>/<day>/<project>/<version>/<platform>
• LHCb has triggered a exploratory meeting to understand the interaction of AA and the middleware client software. P. Charpentier will report on the next AF.
• November 16, 2006
• Agreed to release configuration LCG_48a. This will include among other small changes the ROOT (5.13.04c) and CORAL (1.6.2)  bug fix releases.  
• Production versions of ROOT and Geant4 are scheduled for December 15th.
• Progress reported in the AA nightly build system. Experiments should be able to test builds for some limited number of platforms in about one week.
• The new lxplus/lxbatch service on SLC4 will be mainly based on 64bit architecture. The conclusion based on the tests that have been performed by the experiments it that it shouldn't be a problem.
• The concerns on the distribution and deployment of middleware client packages continue to be of actuality. Before moving the production to SLC4, these issues will need to be sorted out. Philippe Charpentier will be contacting Flavia Donno to start a discussion and prepare a proposal on how to have a consistent client release of middleware software for the experiments. Philippe will inform the AF of the outcome.
• November 2, 2006
• Castor problems. The upgrade of the  ATLAS and LHCb Castor stagers had to be reverted in oder to allow old applications to continue to run. A new version of the client library compatible with the Castor 2.0 API is being prepared by the castor development team..
• The LCG_48 release, which includes SEAL 1.9.0,  was almost completed at the time of the meeting.
• Nightly builds are being developed for the AA projects. Andreas described briefly the work he started to do to implement nightly builds for the AA software. Small presentation is being prepared for the next AA meeting.
• Enabling SS2 streaming instructions by default in AA code has been put on hold due to the recent problems observed by LHCb when running on the Grid (a sizable fraction of Pentium 3 nodes). It is needed to get more feedback from the experiments before taking a decision.
• October 19, 2006
• Status of LCG_47b and LCG_48 configurations
• October 5, 2006
• Initial feedback from the LHCC reviewers quite positive towards the Applications Area. Good progress was reported with no major concerns having been identified. Action must be taken soon to ensure the required level of manpower remains available beyond 2007. The development of PROOF is progressing satisfactorily, but clear decisions by the experiments are urged.
• Reported that the build of configuration LCG_47, which includes the new development release of ROOT, is completed and will be announced soon. 
• Agreed to start preparing LCG_48 with new version of SEAL (1.9.0) and ROOT (5.13/04) and with possible changes in COOL.
• ATLAS is actively looking at the persistence of the event model in view to identify possible optimizations.
• Looking at the possibility to organize ROOT tutorials for data analysis in a regular manner for experiments and CERN in general.
• September 21, 2006
• General discussion about the preliminary outcomes from the AA internal review. The projects will study carefully the final recommendations when they will be ready. Preparation for the LCG comprehensive review.
• New configuration LCG_47. It was agreed to wait maximum 24 hours to define the configuration in order to include the new Castor client version. SEAL will go as is since the bugs in the component model, mainly related to multi-threading, have not been been fixed yet. The binaries for the compiler version gcc344 will not be included for this configuration.
• Tag name for SLC4 with gcc 3.4.6 will have only the two most significant version digits (e.g. slc4_ia32_gcc34) for all the new builds and links will be created for the existing releases.
• August 31, 2006
• AA internal review. Reviewed the available material and agenda for the internal review. 
• The MB agreed on 22 August to have a common RFIO library between DPM and Castor in a time scale of mid-October.  Meanwhile, it was agreed in the AF in order to help CMS immediately, that ROOT will be modified to provide two different and independent plugins: one for RFIO, which should not include any Castor specific call, and another one for Castor. 
• A new ROOT development version (5.13.02) has been released today. The agreement of the experiments was to wait for couple of weeks to allow a new version of SEAL, which should include some bug fixes in the area of thread safeness, to be ready.
• Agreed to install latest versions of Qt4 and pyQt together with a new version of HippoDraw in the LCG external area on request of ATLAS.
• Agreed to request the deployment of  the "CERN" patch to correct the recently gcc compiler problem that was introduced with the SLC3 updates while waiting for the official redhat one.
• Due to the recent change of the gcc version installed in the SCL4 systems, It was agreed to define the platform  tag including only the 2 more significant digits of the compiler version (e.g. slc4_ia32_gcc34) and make a link on the existing packages that have been released already.
• July 13, 2006
• The testing procedure put in place to validate the new production version of the ROOT package before releasing it was followed and it was a half success. All the AA projects could test their software but only half of the experiments managed to do it in the timing and in the form that the pre-releases were provided.
• ROOT 5.12.00 was released on July 11th as scheduled. The new configuration LCG_46, which includes new ROOT, GSL, Castor versions and builds of all AA projects, was ready in only 24 hours and is being integrated by the experiments.
• The ROOT team have made very interesting I/O optimizations (read ahead, request grouping, and so on) available in the released version. These optimizations can not be implemented when using plug-ins that provide posix like protocols such as rfio, gfal, etc.. If changes in the API could be accommodated then experiments could benefit from the optimizations. This issue will be followed up.
• Agreed to make a new configuration LCG_46a to include the new version of dcap/dcache.
•  Experiments are proceeding with the integration of LCG_46 in their releases. No show stopper found so far.
• June 29, 2006
• Agreed that the ROOT and POOL projects will add in their test suit specific tests to verify that they can read and write files in the mass storage system(s) using the provided protocols and plugins.
• ROOT version 5.12 will be released on July 11th. It was agreed to make a complete new release of LCG (LCG_46) as soon as possible after the ROOT release.
• CMS has serious problems with multi-threading in the area of Qt in case of two concurrent event loops. Asking from the ROOT team to understand the problem and find a solution.
• Geant4 8.1 being released. It comes with a new version of CLHEP. It is the first release of Geant4 with the proper license (following the EGEE model).
• June 15, 2006
• Report on the progress for the forthcoming complete LCG-AA release (configuration LCG_45).  New patch for ROOT was decided.CORAL will come with new features in the ConnectionService for the connection re-trial and fail-over cases. 
• Geant4 started the full scale test for version 8.
• Discussion on the MacOSX platform. The majority of the external libraries are already available. The AA projects need to start building basically now.
• June 1, 2006
• The EuroPython conference is going to be held at CERN this year from 3rd to 5th July. Contributions are welcome. 
• The CMS request on handling the writing of SMatrix objects using Double32_t will be dealt with the experts outside the AF.
• New version 5.11.06  of ROOT has released and new LCG_45 configuration is in preparation.
• Analysed the latest Castor incident caused by the deployment of the latest release of the Castor libraries. The installation of the Castor libraries in the external area should help in these cases.
• New requests from the experiments (CMS, ATLAS, LHCb) on various subjects has been reported.
• May 18, 2006
  • Discussion on the possible workshop to discuss/define strategy for interfacing CAD systems to our geometry models in view of the two projects starting in this area. The conclusion has been not to organize a formal workshop, however the projects will be contacted in case they are interested to have a discussion with the people having some experience on these issues.
  • Decided to look into a possible migration of the projects using SCRAM to the new version 1. The LCG/AA librarian, the release managers of the projects affected (SEAL, POOL, CORAL, COOL, GENSER) will get together with the CMS specialists to evaluate the work.
  • Configurations LCG_43b and LCG_44 has been released.
  • ROOT development release is scheduled for May 31. The production version can either be done end of June or end of September. Input from experiments is required.
    
• April 20, 2006
  • Presentation and discussion on the steps towards making ROOT multithread safe. The I/O part could be implemented in a quite short time scale.
  • Agreed to request the installation of Castor in the LCG external area and add it as part of the LCG configuration.
  • New ROOT development release 5.11/02. Rene presented the main highlights for the release.
  • New configuration will be prepared to include the new release of ROOT.
  • LHCb reported potential problems with authentication for COOL when deployed at Tier1s as the current s/w is based on database username/password in clear.
• April 6, 2006
  • The Oracle instant client library will be packaged in the LCG externals. Oracle has agreed that it can be freely distributed for LCG and  be included in the experiment's software distributions.
  • LCG_43 configuration is complete. It includes a new functional release of COOL together with bug fix and rebuild releases for the other projects.
  • Started to port projects to the new SLC4 platform (all externals, SEAL and RELAX already done)
  • For the Mac platform,  the hardware architecture will need to be included in the platform tag in addition to the OS and compiler to take into account the new models. For example: osx104_ppc_gcc402, osx104_ia32_gcc402.
• March 23, 2006
  • First discussion on the evolution of HepMC and in particular its dependencies to external packages. No final conclusions but more clear directions.
  • Presentation of the [meta] plan for finalizing the migration of SEAL functionality to ROOT. The presented plan was in general agreed.
  • Status of the various releases in the pipeline needed by the experiments.
  • The SLC4 certification has been declared finished. No showstoppers. Now we will need to start building the AA software for this new platform.
• March 9, 2006
  • Concluded on the policy change about C++ exceptions. The note has been produced and accepted by the AF.
  • New proposed dates for the AA internal review are 18-20 September.
  • A proposal for categorizing the AA releases has been accepted. There will be "rebuild releases", "bug fix releases" and "functional releases".
  • The releases of AA packages are progressing with minor delays with respect to the schedule.
• February 23, 2006
  • Ratified the proposal to inherit the specific exception base classes of each AA package (POOL, COOL, etc.) directly from std::exception. Pere will send detailed information to final users.
  • Tentative schedule for the next AA internal review is  beginning of October.
  • ROOT release is scheduled now for next Thursday (2nd March). A new build of the LCG/AA packages will be needed. Dirk will circulate to the AF the plans for POOL, CORAL and COOL releases with the functionality included and Andreas the proposal for the new LCG configuration (LCG_42)
• January 26, 2006
  • Discussion on the grid packages needed by the AA libraries and their dependencies. The discussion was triggered by the need to provide a GFAL installation in LCG externals.
  • Status of the latest releases of AA software: migration to CORAL, and Reflex in ROOT done. AMD64 port still under test in POOL and COOL.
  • Added a permanent item in the AF meeting to discuss possible topics for future AA meetings
• January 12, 2006
  • New quarterly report system for AA based mainly on milestones has been put in place. The report for 2005Q4 is being finished.
  • The installation of the version required by the experiments of HepMC in the LCG external area as a standalone package is progressing well.
  • The next series of releases of LCG software (SEAL, POOL, CORAL, COOL) are scheduled for the end of next week. They will complete the migration from RAL to CORAL and from Reflex in SEAL to Reflex in ROOT. These releases will also culminate the complete porting of all the LCG (internal/external) software to gcc344 and the amd64 architecture.
• December 8, 2005
  • Installations for HyperNews at CERN are available from the URL http://hypernews.cern.ch. Presently the pilot service house two active fora, one each for Atlas and CMS.
  • The proposal for a testbed PROOF system is being prepared in collaboration with Alice and CMS. The main objectives were discussed.
  • The production release of ROOT 5 is scheduled next Thursday. CMS requested that the complete LCG software stack should released based on this ROOT version before CERN closes. Releases of POOL and COOL based on CORAL and on Reflex in ROOT will follow soon after.
  • The port for SEAL to gcc344/amd64 was finished, version 1.7.7 has been built with these new platforms. POOL/COOL should be making the necessary changes to support it.
• November 24, 2005
  • Reviewed the preliminary conclusions and recommendations of the LCG Comprehensive review for what concerns the Applications Area.  Preparation of a proposal together with Alice and CMS for a PROOF testbed cluster with 150-200 nodes.
  • The Linear Algebra package proposal was agreed by the AF. The new package will be part of the production release of ROOT in December.
  • CORAL 1.0.0 has been released.  ATLAS is ready to try it. Work has started in POOL and COOL to adapt to this new version of the Relation Access Layer (RAL).
  • The experiments (ATLAS, LHCb) are migrating to the new series of releases and it going well in general. CMS is testing the  Frontier plugin and some problems are being found.
  • The port of SEAL to gcc-344 ( ia32 and amd64) is basically done. The idea is to start building the POOL products (POOL, COOL, CORAL) for these new platforms.
• November 3, 2005
  • The proposal for HepMC package maintenance was agreed by the AF. The details will be coordinated by Paolo Bartalini in the context of the Generators project.
  • The AF agreed to setup the HyperNews prototype pilot service requested by ATLAS and CMS. The time scale will be to have the installation by the end of next week.
  • ROOT 5.06 was released two days ago. The binaries are already built in LCG externals area (with the optional components such as MathCore, MathMore, etc.). The final production release is scheduled for 15th December.
  • POOL has been tested successfully with ROOT5. This version is interesting for experiments because of the Python interface based on Reflex dictionaries. The complete suit of the LCG software should be ready for the beginning of next week.
  • Presented the proposed release schedule for the various products of the POOL project
• October 20, 2005
  • CHEP paper submissions discussed.
  • Clarification on the maintenance of pacman and usage by experiments. Agreement that SPI provides tarball repository for all packages (internal and external). 
  • Binaries for Fluka will be installed in the external area.
  • Agenda for the AA session in the LCG comprehensive review (14-15 Nov)
  • Parallel validation releases for POOL with ROOT5 and CORAL.
  • New requests from ATLAS: Reflex checksum utility and new platform slc3_ia32_gcc344
• October 6, 2005
  • Initial discussion on the next steps for PROOF. Agreed to have a series of presentations to the experiments (in the format of presentation/demo during the collaboration software week) to sell the product and get what the real needs from the experiments are.
  • Quick summary of the ROOT workshop that took place last week.
  • FLUKA binary installation: the AF will coordinate a derogation from the FLUKA licensing conditions for all LHC experiments.
  • Progress in the validation by the experiments of the version of POOL based on Reflex.
• September 22, 2005
  • SPI project. Andreas Pfeiffer will be the new SPI project leader starting from the beginning of October.
  • Following a discussion and some corrections to be implemented, the AF endorses the AA Plan for Phase 2 document.
  • ROOT development version 5.04/00 was released last Tuesday.
  • POOL version 2.2.0 (first version of POOL based on Reflex) has been released.
  • The compiler gcc 3.4.3 (instead of the currently agreed gcc 3.4.4) will be used for the AMD64 platform porting.
• September 1, 2005
  • The technical training offered by Apple should only be scheduled in-time when the AA software is fully available for the Apple platform.
  • The AA plan exercise could be concluding now. The only pending issue is the interest of the experiments (ATLAS, CMS, LHCb) to have a Linear Algebra package independent of the ROOT framework.  A prototype development has been proposed. Minor changes will be done in the plan document and feedback from experiment are expected in a time scale of one week.
  • Pacman. No immediate hope to make the product run natively on Windows (is claimed to run well under cygwin).
  • New releases. POOL will have two branches: one to validate Reflex, and one to validate the new improved performance (CPU, I/O) still based on Reflection.
    ROOT 5 development release scheduled by 20th September (just before the ROOT workshop)
  • New version of Python (2.4) was decided for any new version of the LCG software starting from beginning of December.
• July 28, 2005
  • List of the SEAL packages needed by ATLAS, CMS and LHCb and requiring maintenance.
  • License issues for SEAL packages and LCG/AA in general. ROOT copyright and license needed further clarification.
  • Status of the various releases SEAL, POOL, ROOT, etc.
  • Agreed on the evaluation of a possible bulletin broad service (e.g. HyperNews) by SPI
• July 21, 2005 (special planning meeting)
  • The following conclusions were reached in the final wrap-up:
    1. The ROOT team will take the maintenance of existing SEAL packages (this will be reflected in the plan i.e. the creation of a work package ‘SEAL’ with a coordinator)
    2. The ROOT team should help the experiments and POOL on how to adopt the new merged components.
    3. Linear Algebra. No conclusion for the proposal to have an evaluation of an independent (from TObject) version of the linear algebra package.
    4. Study the implications of packaging to understand how the experiments can mix latest releases from certain packages to be used in conjunction with the usually older, base/core packages.
• July 14, 2005
  • AA plans. In general the experiments were not ready to discuss them. Proposed and agreed a special AF meeting dedicated for that. The schedule for finalizing the plans will be adapter accordingly.
  • Geant4 geometry I/O. Solution was devised that will fulfill the needs of ROOT I/O and will add the necessary protections to  Geant4.
  • New patch to ROOT 4.02/02 will be required due to some failing  regression tests in POOL.
• June 30, 2005
  • Finalization of the AA plans delayed two weeks.
  • ROOT 5 development version released  and including initial versions of Mathcore, Reflex, Cintex and RooFit.
• June 16, 2005
  • MathCore proposal has been agreed. Agreement on the proposed API. The library will be included in the end of June release of ROOT. Independent tar file with MathCore will also be made available at the same time.
  • Frontier as a POOL/RAL plugin. Agreed to develop an proof of concept prototype to evaluate performance on read only databases.
  • POOL 2.1 released. Coordination is need to avoid problems with incoherent/incompatible grid middleware package versions.
• June 2, 2005
  • Updated list of SEAL+ROOT merge topics
  • Python bindings for Reflex: decision to pursuit PyROOT in tandem with Cintex for the short term
  • GCC 3.4.4 to be used for the next iteration with the amd64 and ia32 architectures
  • LCG software will not be build anymore for RH73 version of the operating system
  • Various new versions of POOL, ROOT, Geant4 expected at the end on June
• May 12, 2005
  • Status of the writing of the AA chapter in the LCG TRD.
  • Decided that PROOF will be a work package in the CORE (ROOT) project.
  • Report on the current functionality of PyReflex. Need for a solution in a short time scale.
  • Decided to build a new series of versions of SEAL, POOL, etc, based on the ROOT production version 4.04/02
  • The current level of  backward compatibility for the ROOT backend of the  POOL version with Reflex adequate to experiments.
  • Agreed that the new "toolbox" configurations will be take the new MacOSX version into account.
• April 28, 2005
  • The final report of the AA internal review has been very well received by the project leaders.
  • Each project (SPI, ROOT, POOL, SIMU) will prepare a work plan taking into account the review recommendations
  • Established the process for handling the details in the SEAL+ROOT merge. The relative priorities for the first set of topics has been assigned. It is understood that work items of the "old" plans have higher priority.
  • The AA priority for next supported platform is still AMD64 with gcc 3.4.3.
• April 14, 2005
  • Python courses will continue to be organized by the CERN technical training service
  • Started to have discussions on the relative priorities of the list of topics for the SEAL+ROOT merge
  • POOL should be planning for the first release compatible with Reflex by end of June.
  • Problem on the GNU Fortran compiler:
    • What is the current usage of Fortran in the experiments application software?
    • This is a real problem. Fortran will probably be use for years.
    • CERN/IT will take an active role in finding a solution.
• April 7, 2005
  • AA internal review follow-up. Detailed plans for most of the work items are still needed. It was agreed that a list with all the topics will be produced together with all the relevant issues.
  • Announced new ROOT development release
  • External libraries. A set of new additions are being requested by the experiments.
  • It was agreed to interface ROOT to SRM. This will be done as a ROOT plugin.
  • RooFit will be packaged and re-distributed within ROOT starting from version 5
• March 24, 2005
  • Encountered problems with schema evolution between ROOT3 and ROOT4 based POOL versions. Problems are fixed and new releases planned.
  • Porting to gcc 3.4.3 compiler:  reporting progress, installation issues, etc.
  • AFS volumes containing the releases of AA software and external libraries made read only to improve performance.
• March 10, 2005
  • Agreed to have the start of the AA meetings to 16:30 and with a cycle of every two weeks.
  • The AA internal review agenda is being prepared in http://agenda.cern.ch/fullAgenda.php?ida=a051527
  • Tentatively we could propose to stop building and testing new AA software for RH 7.3 starting in July
• February 23, 2005
  • Vincenzo will act as champion and driver for the AMD64/gcc 3.4.3 port.
• February 10, 2005
  • ATLAS suggests a review of CLHEP usage is needed in view of the persistency problems seen and the CLHEP2 migration workload to come
  • AA will (with the help of the experiments) maintain a list of AA software versions/platforms currently in use in the experiments
  • It was agreed that RH7.3/gcc 3.2 can be retired on a summer timescale, when ATLAS ceases builds for this configuration
  • the gcc 3.4.3 port will be done for both Intel 32-bit and AMD64
• January 27, 2005
  • LCG AA will ask the CLHEP project to regard schema evolution compatibility as a constraining requirement in CLHEP code changes
  • LCG AA will include CLHEP tests in the POOL regression test suite to check against new POOL/ROOT and CLHEP versions
  • SLC3 sysadmins have been asked to keep in place the runtime workaround that enables POOL 1.7 operation on SLC3
  • RAL will be partitioned in place in POOL to be independent of the rest of POOL
  • AMD64/gcc 3.4.3 is agreed as the next platform priority [ATLAS adds that ATLAS TDAQ requests 32-bit gcc 3.4.3 support also.]
  • SPI proposals for bugfix policy and cleanup of release policy were revised and agreed
  • The following points will be raised with the PEB:
    • there should be a discussion on the application of xrootd in the LHC experiments, whether in the AF or some other forum. With xrootd at the border between applications and gridland, the appropriate forum is not clear given present scopes.
    • serious problems with RFIO (described in an appendix to the minutes) are outstanding and need to be addressed if RFIO is to continue to be used.
    • the suggestion should be put to the experiments that if xrootd is proven to be a fully functional replacement for RFIO, it should be adopted as the RFIO replacement. Rene said xrootd covers the functionality of RFIO and adds others like load balancing.
• January 13, 2005
  • Frederic Hemmer joined the meeting for a discussion of middleware issues
  • After discussion with Frederic, AF reaffirms the proposals that
    • SPI's librarians integration meeting be used as a forum in which gLite and GDA join the current participants in a managed process of proposing and agreeing on packages/versions
    • gLite (and GDA) make use of SPI's external software services as an aid to coherent management of package/ version usage
  • the AF notes (and regrets) the lack of a forum to effectively address data cataloging and management plans in the experiments and identify commonalities among them
  • SEAL has built with ROOT 4.02/00; POOL will build a prerelease with it next week. POOL will then need validation feedback from the experiments. Also would like tests that can be integrated in POOL regression suite.
  • SEAL partitioning is underway (with much remaining to be done)
  • Cintex is ready for experiment trials with their EDM classes
  • AttributeList, RAL will move from POOL to SEAL, possibly as early as the next SEAL internal release.
  • full SLC3 build of AA software and externals checks out OK and migration will now be done (has since been done).
• December 15, 2004
  • POOL supports SLC3 from release 1.8 onwards.
  • POOL2 production release is expected in late January, following the (now imminent) ROOT production release and experiment validation.
  • POOL does not support persistifying boost. Any persistifying of boost classes is at the user's own risk; POOL will not invest effort in fixing schema evolution problems arising from boost changes.
• November 18, 2004
  • SEAL partitioning needs to be given higher priority.
  • Rene has reported a ROOT fix (available in ROOT 4.01/04) for the CLHEP namespace schema change problem.
  • Boost smart pointers will not be used on public interfaces.
  • An experiment request to introduce AMD64/gcc platform support is likely before long.
  • AA will share the Wed AA meeting slot with ARDA, as requested by Massimo Lamanna
  • SPI will request dedicated lxbuild servers for AA
  • A need from POOL for Globus file catalog external library support is imminent
  • A Middleware visit to the AF will be planned to discuss this and other AA-Middleware issues
• October 28, 2004
  • planning is actively underway for transferring AA leadership to a new project leader in Feb 2005. AA activities will continue to be part of the LCG project. The leadership change and LCG Phase 1/2 transition will be an occasion for examining potential changes to the project.
  • Ian Bird attended to discuss AA/GDA issues, summarized as follows:
    • AF proposes that gLite (and GDA) make use of SPI's external software services as an aid to coherent management of package/ version usage
    • AF proposes that SPI's librarians integration meeting be used as a forum in which gLite and GDA join the current participants in a managed process of proposing and agreeing on packages/versions
    • GDA will begin in-house POOL testing using the POOL test suite; the POOL team will give any needed assistance in setup
    • The DC experience with EDG RLS led to a reimplementation of the RLS back end by GDA to address its deficiencies. The AF would like to understand how this experience and work is being used by gLite.
    • Ian made the clear and fundamental statement that with present web services technology, it is not possible to achieve the performance required of grid services. Why then are we using this technology.
    • Ian informed us that lxplus machines have a grid UI environment available, but this seems too little known.
    • Large numbers of people will need to have grid certificates if grid enabled services successfully play a role in analysis contexts which are ramping up now. Is there a plan for handling this? Is the FNAL Kerberos solution an attractive option that is being looked at?
    • The issue of SLC3/RH Enterprise runtime (non)compatibility was raised again. This is a problem for the AA but not something that can be resolved by the AA. How do we get it resolved.
    • AF agreed that the experiments are advanced enough on SLC3 migration that it is OK for grid sites to start moving to SLC3.
  • Dirk needs DB applications input from the experiments for the 3D project, in addition to data volume input.
  • POOL has an agreed plan for enabling POOL support within the ROOT environment. The focus has been on 1) providing a POOL plugin for ROOT to enable support for POOL references in ROOT, and 2) using Reflex to make LCG dictionary based classes accessible in ROOT. If there are requests beyond what is presently planned, e.g. support for writing POOL files in the ROOT environment, the experiments need to make them clear.
  • US CMS has implemented a Globus file catalog back end for the POOL file catalog interface. It will be added to POOL when complete and tested.
  • Fermilab people have implemented a first version of a Frontier back end to the POOL storage manager.
  • a serious compatibility problem has come to light for POOL persistency of CLHEP classes. CLHEP 1.9 introduces a CLHEP namespace, which will render CLHEP objects written with POOL in CLHEP 1.8 based applications unreadable from CLHEP 1.9 based applications. Possible solutions are being investigated. This will not delay, but rather accelerate, the introduction of a CLHEP 1.9-based SEAL/POOL.
  • the channel for proposals for new packages and versions will be SPI's librarians integration meeting (LIM), with the AF used for escalation/ approval.
  • suggestions for Savannah improvements are invited; the developer will be visiting SPI soon.
  • Geant4 will use CLHEP 1.9 in Geant4 7.0, not CLHEP 2.0 as planned earlier.
• October 14, 2004
  • POOL 2 release expected in ~2 weeks, using ROOT4 development version with new persistency, and automatic schema evolution, for most STL containers.
  • Production version will come out at end of year, when the next ROOT production release is scheduled.
  • This plan is compatible (just!) with CMS and ATLAS schedules; they both require a production version no later than mid January.
  • The experiments emphasised that ABI compatibility between SLC3 and RH Enterprise Linux is an essential requirement.
  • Experiment manpower commitments to POOL/CondDB were discussed. Many still have to be firmed up, and it is important that once firm they are also stable.
  • There is interest in CMS and other quarters in proceeding promptly with implementing a Reflex back end that fills CINT data structures. Identifying available people with the expertise to work on this is a key issue.
• September 16, 2004
  • The ROOT file format for the POOL2 prereleases is not guaranteed to be stable. When POOL2 is released, it will include a specification of the file format stability commitments.
  • ATLAS, LHCb are asked to test the POOL2 prereleases now.
  • A collaboration between Fermilab and the 3D project on FroNtier, a high performance and scalable multi-tier database access system, including POOL integration, looks very promising.
  • A report to the Desktop Forum on MacOSX as a development platform has been prepared.
• July 29, 2004
  • Geant4 expects to support CLHEP 1.9.x in a G4 development version by end September.
  • Andreas Pfeiffer will initiate a bi-weekly Librarians Integration Meeting (LIM) to discuss configuration/integration of AA software into the experiments, and coordination of AA (pre-)releases with the experiments.
  • SPI will provide a "single line command" for source download and build for AA software, with the first version available in September.
  • SPI is developing an XML-based build configuration description which will be the basis for preparing configuration information used by SCRAM, CMT and autoconf/gmake.
  • SPI will implement autoconf/gmake based builds, using the XML based configuration information.
  • External packages are now built for SLC3 and MacOSX.
  • Alberto flags the need for more Windows expertise if we are to support Windows at the same level as the other platforms. Are there Windows experts out there who can help?
  • A means of coordinating external package versions between AA, GDA and experiments is needed.
• July 15, 2004
  • The AF supports the selection of Gabriele Cosmo to lead the simulation project
  • SLC3 platform names will follow a slc3_ia32_gcc323 pattern
  • External packages for SLC3 are about 80-90% done
  • External packages for MacOSX are at a similar level of completion
  • icc8 porting will continue. About 50% of external packages are done. Priority lower than SLC3 and MacOSX.
• July 1, 2004
  • GDML as exchange format is progressing with much remaining to do. AF supports going forward, with immediate goal to demonstrate Geant4 write/read capability on complex (LHC detector) geometries.
  • ROOT4 production release will be next week, with SEAL and POOL releases using it following closely.
  • eliminating SEAL's ROOT dependence will be investigated, in the context of beginning to split SEAL into independently releasable components.
  • POOL collections WP meetings have been regularized on a biweekly cycle, with progress and discussions on several fronts.
  • IT/DB now has an Oracle client distribution page.
• June 10, 2004
  • Starting with SEAL 1.4 and POOL 1.7, ROOT4 based builds as well as ROOT3 will be provided on the supported platforms. Experiments are encouraged to start evaluating and validating ROOT4. ROOT3 based versions will continue to be provided until the experiments fully certify ROOT4 and decide to drop ROOT3.
  • The experiments should consider use of ROOT4 based POOL to be 'at their own risk' until they have performed adequate validation to certify it for their own production use.
  • Markus and Rene believe that backward compatibility issues have been addressed and POOL/ROOT4 will support reading of ROOT3 based files and appending to ROOT3 based files. It will be for POOL and the experiments to validate this.
  • The POOL team needs more real-world POOL tests from the experiments to integrate into their test suite.
  • Rene gave a presentation describing ROOT's plans for expanded RDBMS support, in particular mapping TTrees to relational tables via an RDBMS extension of the standard ROOT I/O engine.
  • There were reports on CondDB and simu project developments.
• May 13, 2004
  • Alberto will take up with Andreas moving forward on the appwork evaluation (the gmake+autoconf build system).
  • Ian Bird attended this meeting for a discussion of grid deployment area liaison issues.
  • GDA will integrate AA-provided test suites to validate AA-GDA software integration (e.g. POOL-RLS) into the test suite used for deployment validation, in order to expose integration problems before deployment.
  • The packaging tool for the coming new middleware has still to be decided. There have been discussions with Miron Livny about his group doing this, using pacman. Pacman is what SPI has been investigating and we will continue with that since it seems to be the most likely common solution.
  • AA needs a good communication channel to GDA for e.g. discussion of release schedules and release announcements.
  • We will arrange for a grid deployment area person to attend an AF meeting dedicated to GDA liaison issues every few months.
• April 29, 2004
  • Discussion on MacOSX in the experiments. There will be an AAM meeting on Mac computing soon. Planning porting work, and its relative priority, is underway.
  • boost compilation problems with icc8.
  • AF will meet with GDA (Ian Bird) soon to discuss mutual issues.
  • Conditions DB (sub)project is in urgent need of specific commitments on participation.
• April 15, 2004
  • The AF identified a candidate new level 1 AA milestone, an end 2004 milestone for the validation of Geant4 in production in this year's ATLAS, CMS and LHCb data challenges. [Subsequently agreed by the PEB.]
  • A plan will be developed for the gradual integration of ROOT4 with AA software, with initial adoption fairly soon after its June release, and usage of new functionality in ROOT4 for schema evolution and improved STL persistency following later on timescales consistent with backward compatibility requirements from the experiments.
  • External and AA software have been ported to the CEL3 CERN Enterprise Linux certification platform.
• April 1, 2004
  • Factor two speed-up on CMS POOL data store in production after CMS/POOL/ROOT examination (optimized ROOT key access)
  • LHCb pre-production with POOL should start next week
  • ATLAS POOL problems (CLHEP matrix, vector) solved [post-AF developments also]
  • POOL workplan approved with mostly minor revisions
  • Less minor: agreement to remove collection catalogs, as not within POOL scope
  • CEL3/gcc 3.2.3 external package builds completed; SEAL and POOL builds underway
  • MacOSX accepted as a development platform and replacement for Solaris as a ttest-build platform
• March 4, 2004
  • The experiment Data Challenges this year (ALICE excepted) will use the present ROOT3 based POOL. A new version 4 of ROOT will be released in a production version circa June. It has features attractive to POOL such as improved STL container persistency. POOL will develop a ROOT4 migration plan, with concurrent support for ROOT3 and ROOT4 based POOL I/O a requirement after ROOT4 adoption in order to meet the experiment requirements for 18 month readability of data.
  • The SEAL workplan was approved.
  • The POOL workplan draft was discussed and some changes agreed upon; with these changes the plan is acceptable. Dirk will update the plan accordingly.
  • Proposed new Level 1 (LHCC) milestones were discussed.
• February 19, 2004
  • ATLAS reports their simulation validation for Geant4 simulation production is complete, with 500k events simulated and written to POOL.
  • The substance of the SEAL workplan was agreed, in particular including the new item discussed, mathlib:
  • A broadened mathlib technical discussion forum including experts from all experiments will be charged to develop a detailed technical plan. See the minutes for more info.
  • Pere will finish up the SEAL workplan document with the objective of approving it at the next AF and PEB meetings. Next AF meeting will address the POOL workplan.
  • gcc 3.2.3 will be the next production compiler supported by LCG AA. Timescale probably circa summer.
• January 29, 2004
  • Experiments are working on POOL performance/file size and making substantial improvements by optimizing how they use POOL. It is important that we capture the lessons in the POOL documentation.
  • Dirk reported on problems with RLS and its interaction with POOL that have seriously impacted CMS attempts to get production going on LCG-2.
  • Experiments will consult directly with POOL, SEAL to ensure their requirements are reflected in the draft workplans before we address the plans in the AF.
  • A mathlib project proposal based on the ROOT-SEAL discussions so far will be available shortly.
  • gcc 3.2.3 will be the next compiler supported by LCG AA. Timescale is uncertain; possibly circa summer 2004. SPI will start preparing for it on a time-available basis.
  • icc version 8 is out and will be installed by SPI.
  • SPI will provide a standard installation of CERNLIB (the kernel, not satellite packages).
• January 15, 2004
  • A proposal is being prepared on how to deal with NAG-C and Iris Explorer/Open Inventor licenses
  • Discussion on need for POOL relational back end
  • LHCb report on their almost-completed POOL integration milestone
  • SEAL has distributed a preliminary workplan. It is at http://lcgapp.cern.ch/project/mgmt/seal-2004-draft.doc
  • CMS requests item-by-item experiment input on interest and usage plans for workplan items. Agreement is that experiments will annotate draft workplans with their input prior to settling the plans in the AF.
• November 27, 2003
  • LCG policies developed by SPI ratified.
• November 20, 2003
  • Problems with the icc compiler (not with code) are impeding the completion of the icc port. Because icc is only a test platform, this delay will not be allowed to delay the forthcoming SEAL and POOL releases.
  • The forthcoming POOL release (1.4) will support Windows.
  • Experiments are asked to present proposed new integration/validation milestones (relating to the apps area) in the architects forum.
  • The ARDA kickoff workshop is delayed to January [21-22] because of the difficulty of finding workable dates.
• November 13, 2003
  • Internal review report received. Constructive and useful. Project leaders will write up first responses for next week.
  • We will take up next week (we can hope for the last time this cycle) LCG policies from SPI for ratification, after we receive an iteration from Alberto reflecting recent input.
  • SEAL will coordinate migration to CLHEP 2.0. Fix for CLHEP matrix dictionary generation problem is in progress.
  • appwork supports complete builds of POOL and SEAL and the projects are asked to take a serious look at it. Next steps are remote sites (done) and other platforms (icc, then Windows).
  • Boost (not SWIG) will be our standard means of interfacing C++ to Python, complemented by PyLCGDict.
  • We agree we will work now to converge upon a single dictionary (LCG and ROOT/CINT) and we will develop a concrete plan for this. Discussions are underway between SEAL and ROOT.
  • ARDA planning is starting and a kickoff workshop is being planned (likely date has changed to the week of Jan 12)
• October 30, 2003
  • This was a special meeting on a proposal from Rene Brun for a tighter collaboration between LCG AA and ROOT. No attempt to summarize. Read the slides and notes. Will be the subject of an apps area meeting on Dec 10.
• October 23, 2003
  • Ratification of LCG AA policies will be taken up at the next regular AF meeting.
  • SWIG vs. Boost as the mechanism for interfacing C++ classes to Python is leaning the Boost way and will be taken up at the next regular AF meeting with all experiments present.
  • There will be (was) a special AF meeting on Oct 30 to hear a proposal from Rene Brun on how to go forward with a tighter collaboration between the applications area and ROOT (was very constructive and will be reported out soon.)
• October 9, 2003
  • Statement on GSL and NAG expected within two weeks.
  • First phase of SPI-G4 collaboration on infrastructure established (involving Savannah and testing).
  • Long and productive discussion on the simulation project. See the minutes. Some of the main points: Generic framework's immediate target is the physics validation project, which could make good use of it immediately. Near term approach will be to use FLUGG to integrate FLUKA as a simulation engine using the G4 geometry. Longer term approach, from early next year when the ALICE/ROOT VMC using the ROOT geometry model is ready, will be to use an XML exchange format building on GDML work to transmit G4 geometries to the VMC. The AA will make a proposal to SC2 to bring this persistent exchange tool building on GDML within project scope.
  • POOL and SEAL will put out releases ASAP to pick up ROOT 3.10
  • We will designate certain specific releases as test build releases. Only for these releases will all the external packages be built for the test platforms.
  • Build system: LHCb has a CMT-based SEAL Windows build working. Regarding the longer term (cf last AF), a fast autoconf+make based prototype is in place which builds POOL. It will be made public soon.
• October 2, 2003
  • POOL needs more complex schema from the experiments to improve POOL testing.
  • Mathlib workplan will come as part of an updated SEAL workplan in the next quarter.
  • Prototype for POOL RDBMS independence layer (file catalog and collections) should be out by the internal review. Using OTL.
  • Conditions DB work package needs to get going quickly.
  • All agree on an objective of stabilizing external software versions as our software development stabilizes. Goal will be ~6mo typical lifetime for a given package version.
  • Progress on the needed improvements to the SCRAM build system identified in last year's evaluation has been disappointing. Most seriously, support for Windows binary builds required by LHCb remains incomplete. LHCb will choose an expedient approach to implementing an interim solution. For the longer term we will examine going to a conventional (gmake+autoconf) open software approach. The matter will be addressed in the internal review.
• September 9, 2003
  • Discussion of generator services and FLUKA subprojects of the simulation project
  • First prototype of a relational back end for the POOL object store is emerging. CMS have expressed their need for it for conditions data; other experiments are asked for input.
  • ATLAS wants OSX support. CMS wants it also. Will not get any official attention until the present set of additional compilers is properly dealt with -- Windows, icc, ecc.
• July 24, 2003
  • Distribution and installation system for LCG and external software is completed and under test. Information is on the SPI web.
  • Discussion on simulation
  • Planning for the applications area internal review in October
• July 10, 2003
  • A special meeting to address issues surrounding the PI work program, the role of AIDA, and the integration of ROOT as an analysis tool in the LCG software environment. No attempt to summarize; read the full text.
• July 3, 2003
  • SPI's work on icc and ecc is complete except for MySQL related issues. The ball is now in SEAL's court, followed by POOL. The MySQL file catalog implementation will not be built on icc, ecc until the MySQL issues are resolved; other implementations will be used.
  • SPI is proceeding with Windows, where there is real progress. SEAL now builds with SCRAM under Windows/cygwin using VC++. POOL is in progress. SPI is making progress on building VS project files in SCRAM.
  • POOL and SEAL will make it a target for one of the next releases to agree on release procedures.
  • A 2-3 day internal technical review of LCG software is planned for the fall, tentatively for the last week of October.
  • Software packaging and distribution service is urgently needed from SPI.
• June 12, 2003
  • POOL/SEAL integration/acceptance milestones from ATLAS and CMS are needed ASAP. We should have next-quarter milestones for this in the coming quarterly report.
  • Software packaging and distribution plan and service is urgently needed from SPI.
  • There continues to be little feedback on AIDA - the current interface and the proposed changes from PI - from experiments or the AIDA community.
  • Derek Feichtinger and Frederik Orellana will work on two tasks in the distributed analysis area: 1) developing a remote launch service for interactive analysis, to be used by PROOF and Ganga; 2) bringing up Mannot (Ticino, Switzerland) as an operational LCG-1 production site.
  • Technical design reviews for POOL and SEAL will be planned for late fall.
• May 22, 2003
  • User feedback is needed from the experiments for the AIDA interface review.
  • Projects are asked to work with the experiments to establish milestones for the integration and usage of LCG software in the experiments.
  • Good progress in SPI on icc build of the software library. ecc also in progress. gcc 3.2.3 will follow.
  • We will move to ROOT 3.05.05 in the next POOL, SEAL releases.
• May 8, 2003
  • We are asking the experiments, the projects, ROOT, the apps area in general for proposals as to how to employ the presently available effort in distributed analysis.
  • CMS is planning to use POOL/SEAL from June/July; see Vincenzo's May 14 applications area meeting report
  • The installation area layout policy proposed by SPI is adopted
  • All libraries will include a prefix in the name (TBD, e.g. 'lcg_') to remove the possibility of name clashes with libraries outside the project
  • A policy for version migration of external packages is needed
  • The proposal to bring conditions DB work into scope will be sent to the SC2
• April 17, 2003
  • IT will implement a CVS service acceptable to LCG-Apps in a few months and we will use it.
  • POOL, SEAL schedules are acceptably synchronized
  • For the first test compiler, icc, SPI should be ready by end May, SEAL by end June, POOL in their following release
  • Vincenzo will do initial ROOT implementation of AIDA basics; target is June.
  • The POOL/SPI proposal on testing will become policy; give feedback right away.
  • We need a MySQL service. The experiments will present the issue to the PEB.
  • It is too early to give serious attention to a common XTI based dictionary, but we should keep it in mind as an objective and plan accordingly.
• March 13, 2003
  • The experiments need a working, supported implementation of AIDA histogramming. This will be a ROOT based implementation. We are trying to find someone to work on this.
  • The standards and policies that define 'SPI compliance' must be clearly agreed, documented and posted by SPI as LCG policies.
  • Proper documentation is a release prerequisite. A package cannot be tagged for inclusion in a release unless and until documentation requirements are met.
  • SPI will propose concrete and practical documentation requirements that will provide a clear standard.
  • A proposal to SC2 to bring common conditions DB work within apps area scope will be prepared.
• February 27, 2003
  • Licensing. The apps area must have a GPL-type license in order to function, because only GPL licensed software can use other GPL software, and because we depend on many GPL packages. The PEB will work to establish such a license as the LCG license.
  • The PI project will develop a user friendly end user interface for AIDA based on value semantics rather than pointers over the next few weeks, for user evaluation.
  • Simulation project setup status was summarized. It is coming together quite well. Presentations to management and to the applications area will take place over the next two weeks. An initial workplan will be presented to the SC2 on March 14.
• February 13, 2003
  • CLHEP has accepted the LCG/SEAL proposal to use LCG infrastructure to 'host' CLHEP (CVS repository, Savannah portal, other SPI infrastructure)
  • LCG CLHEP activity will be organized as part of the SEAL/math libraries work package
  • Red Hat 7.3/gcc 3.2 will continue to be the sole release platform for the moment, based on the needs of the experiments. Debug and optimize versions will be provided.
  • Builds for the purposes of testing will be set up for icc, ecc, Visual C++ and Solaris CC in that priority order.
  • The ROOT course was very well received. A further ROOT course, and other courses (e.g. SCRAM) will be arranged.
• January 23, 2003
  • CVS structure and include convention are settled. See SPI web.
  • ATLAS will pursue the 'gcc-xml path' from C++ header file object descriptions through gcc-xml and the LCG dictionary to the ROOT dictionary and ROOT I/O in POOL.
  • We will propose to CLHEP that the LCG apps area host the CLHEP software (CVS repository, Savannah portal, etc.) [proposal was accepted]
  • Simu project setup status was outlined.
• December 5, 2002
  • Grid architecture
    • Lothar's slides from CMS meeting
    • Ruth's slide
  • Units slides, D. Quarrie Powerpoint, PDF
  • SEAL, Pere Mato
• November 21, 2002
  • Discussion on PI project and analysis RTAG
  • Vincenzo's slides
• October 31, 2002
  • We are a C++ based project; core AA software will be in C++ at the moment.
  • Java based tools which may use parts of the core C++ software but are not themselves used by the core software, are allowed as optional components.
  • ROOT dictionary - LCG dictionary cross-population
  • ROOT/CINT/LCG collaboration on common dictionary
  • New projects: core libraries and services, physics interfaces
• October 11, 2002
  • Non-conclusive SCRAM/CMT discussion
• AF meetings were on hiatus while the architects were meeting in the architecture blueprint RTAG Jun-Oct
• June 7, 2002
  • LCG dictionary following Gaudi/Athena dictionary interface (based on Java reflection API)
  • Population of the ROOT dictionary from the LCG dictionary
• May 15, 2002
  • POOL will use a globally unique ID to identify files
  • Deep copies need to be supported in POOL
  • Savannah will be evaluated
• Apr 24, 2002
  • Addressed persistency framework issues
  • Component breakdown suggested by RTAG accepted as basis for work
  • MySQL will be the relational technology for the initial prototype
  • Jobs do not share files on write; a given file has no more than one writer at a time
  • Will support recovery at finer granularity than file level