Minutes of the third LCG Generator Services project planning meeting
30-November-2007
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People attending:
Jon Butterworth (JB)
Gloria Corti (GC)
Gabriele Cosmo (GCO)
Lev Dudko (LD)
Osamu Jinnouchi (OJ)
Mikhail Kirsanov (MK)
Michelangelo Mangano (MLM)
Pere Mato (PM)
Witek Pokorski (WP)
Torbjorn Sjostrand (TS)
Alberto Ribon (AR)
Peter Richardson (PR)
Patrick Robbe (PAR)
No people attending remotely due to VRVS problem.
(Judith Katzy trying to connect)
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WP presented the progress report since the last planning meeting and
the proposed plan of work for the next 6 months.
Additional comments to the slides:
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General:
WP proposed to introduce a minor organizational change and to merge
GENSER, VALIDATION and SUPPORT into one workpackage called GENSER
(covering generators repository, validation and support). Since those
activities are stronly connected, it seems more natural to have them
within one workpackage. With this new organization, Generator Services
project would consist of three workpackages: GENSER, HepMC and MCDB.
GENSER:
JB suggested that building generators on Windows should not be a high
priority task. Everybody agreed on that. Only the main generators will
be build on Windows. A dedicated person should come to work on it in
March 2008.
MLM is preparing some stand-alone validation code for ALPGEN, in
collaboration with CMS. This will allow validation for the combination
of samples with different jet multiplicities, as in W+multijet final
states. Once the stand-alone code is ready, it can be fitted to the
needs of both ATLAS and CMS, and maintained by GENSER.
MLM proposed exploring the use of Spartyjet
http://www.pa.msu.edu/~huston/SpartyJet/html/ as a common tool to
cluster jets at the generator level, e.g. to standardize MC validation
tests.
JB pointed out that FastJet is a package also relevant for the
generators (validation) and therefore it should be installed by
GENSER.
WP said that FastJet is already installed in lcg/external.
Decision:
--------
In addition to the generators repository, GENSER will look after a
collection of tools (FastJet, SpartyJet, etc) that can be relevant for
the generators (validation). These tools will be installed in LCG
externals (one level up from MCGenerators) as they are also relevant
for analysis.
There will be a table added to the Generator Services web pages with
all the available generator-related tools (FastJet, Rivet, RivetGun,
HepMC, etc). The installed versions and their status will be listed
there.
HepMC:
JB said that the HepMC 'translators' (from Fortran generators'
specific event records) are crucial and the support is missing. This
was seconded by a number of people (the new C++ generators normally
come with HepMC interfaces, but not the old Fortran ones).
Decision:
--------
GENSER will be resposible for the further development (probably
minimal if any), maintenance and support of the HepMC 'translators'.
WP suggested that this could be a place for a contribution from MCNet.
JB will look at this possiblity.
General:
PM, GCO and WP will come up with a proposal for a new Project
Leader. They will circulated the proposal for an approval.
Monthly meetings:
WP will contact Madgraph people to invite them to one of
the monthly meetings.
