Speaker
Description
The LHCb Analysis Productions system provides a large scale, centralised, and reproducible framework for executing analysis workflows on the grid using officially released LHCb software. However, some analyses require prototyping or development of custom modifications to core packages, which cannot easily be deployed within the standard release cycle. It is therefore desirable to enable customised software stacks to be executed within the Analysis Productions framework while retaining reproducibility and fair usage.
Franklin addresses this need by leveraging the lb-dev suite of tools to allow analysts to make modifications across LHCb software projects and build them in a consistent, reproducible environment. Through GitLab merge requests tightly integrated with Analysis Productions, the testing and release of these custom packages is managed systematically: CI pipelines first verify that the modified projects build successfully, after which Analysis Productions can be run on the resulting test artifacts to validate physics output and workflow behaviour. Once these checks pass, the custom build is merged and deployed to CVMFS under a versioned Franklin namespace, enabling seamless use in full scale productions.
Full reproducibility is ensured through GitLab releases that record the exact project versions, modifications and metadata used for each build, mirroring what is done for official LHCb software. Automated daily tests further guarantee that Franklin remains compatible with the latest releases as core software evolves.
Franklin enables rapid development of customised software, providing clearly tagged and reproducible releases, and supports robust output validation and execution with Analysis Productions.