FCC Documentation and Training - September 18, 2026

Present: Benedikt Wach, Juraj Smiesko, Alexander Moreno, David Lange, Michel Villanueva, Birgit Stapf, Brieuc Francois

Introduction

• Windows section in the first steps, just replace with WSL
  • Powershell should come with WSL (to check)
  • Benedikt Wach will check
• VM --> Docker, take it from the BNL School slides
• Time to change the theme of the tutorial?
  • Keep readthedocs theme?
  • fcc-tutorials/theme-furo
  • fcc-tutorials/theme-pydata
  • fcc-tutorials/theme-jupyter-book
    • Michel and Benedikt like this one
  • Full Jupyter Book v2
    • More features but requires more effort to switch
  • We will test them and discuss for the next meeting

Debrief on the BNL-CERN school

• 4 lectures on software + 2 tutorial sessions
  • Session 1: Generation, FastSim, FCCAnalysis
  • Session 2: DD4HEP, Gaudi
• Generation, FastSim, FCCAnalyses
  • Full chain from Whizard/Pythia, Simulation with Delphes
  • Quick 5 min intro with slides about physics process and setup
  • Three independent tutorials in Markdown
  • https://github.com/HEP-FCC/LiveSoftwareTutorials/
• DD4Hep, Gaudi
  • DD4hep - create and visualize a simple calorimeter geometry simplecalo1, and simulate particle interaction
  • Gaudi - write steering file to extract information from calorimeter
• Issues
  • Unanticipated default setting by Whizard to ask for ALL cores led to issues to many -> Need to test tutorials on the same system beforehand
  • Minor disk space uses for new or non-CERN users -> Check beforehand how much space is required to work
  • Too little time to cover the material
  • Some uncertainties with relative paths -> no apparent issues with tutorial scripts
• AI usage
  • Question if students should be allowed to use it
  • We can recommend if/how, best practices
  • The solutions are given to the students anyway
  • Juraj commented there is a “tutorial” skill
  • We should mention something in the introduction about what consequences may have the usage of AI
• Action items
  • Birgit is happy to help with the Delphes tutorial, porting back to fcc-tutorials. Let’s open an issue to keep track
  • Think about a page to collect “lessons learned”, to transfer the experience for those who organize the tutorial next time
  • Take the full sim exercise with the calorimeter and port it back to fcc-tutorials, before talking about the CLD geometry
  • Benedikt is looking at FCCAnalysis to add an introduction based on the material of the school