At CERN: Federico, Andre', Marko, Marcelo, Alexandre, Chris, Raja, Vladimir, Philippe
On Vidyo: Andrei, Andrew McNab, Simon Fayer, Xiaomei, Ueda, Milosz, Luisa

Apologies: Wojtek

Follow-up from previous meeting

• Reminder that v6r19 is the target
• pyGSI 0.6.5 pushed to pypi

Current situation

DIRAC:

• v6r17p29 is the last production version
  • Only minor fixes
• v6r18 wiki and release notes will be merged in v6r19 (not done yet)
• v6r19-pre7 is out
  • Backward compatibility of RSS looks like fixed - one more PR with simple fix has been added
    • There are anyway other RSS issues not fixed yet
  • Using externals v6r6p3
  • New gLogger -> logging code is now the default, looks OK
    • Also verified that the connection to centralized logging and ElasticSearch works OK

WebApp:

• NTR

Pilot:

• Created devel branch with fixes and new tests, merged already in master branch after verification

Externals:

• v6r6p3 compiled for both SLC6 and CC7

LCG bundles:

• New Version v12r5 compiled, in testing with DIRAC v6r19 pre versions
  • We discourage its use for now
  • SLC6 version looks OK (inserted in DIRAC certification, both client and server)
  • CC7 version is KO (all dms commands fail because at least gfal2 - but not only - are not fully compiled, at least not statically compiled)
    • Not in our hands, more news from librarians meeting in September

PyGSI:

• Version 0.6.5 compiled added to PyPi

Release planning, tests and certification

Release planning:

• v6r17 series
  • NTR
• v6r19 series
  • v6r19-pre8 will be created including PRs already reviewed OK
  • For tags and MultiProcessor support Andrei will create a PR replacing existing PRs from Andrew and Xiaomei
  • Reminder: the full support of CC7 for DIRAC v6r19 can't be assured (issues are mostly external to DIRAC but nothing we can do) 

Certification process: 

• In the last 2 weeks we ran 3 "Certification Hackhathons", and one more will be done tomorrow
  • We use Trello boards and Slack channels
  • Trello boards are copied from https://trello.com/b/cp8ULOhQ/dirac-certification-template in, e.g. https://trello.com/b/Q7QKMjbI/dirac-v6r19-pre7
  • Each trello card is a task to do for the certification process, many of them contain explanation of the steps to be done
  • For each update on every trello card, the slack channel https://lhcbdirac.slack.com/messages/C3AGWCA8J/ gets an update
• Up to now we kept these meetings private and informal, but from tomorrow we can have more people in, Federico will send invitations.

CI tests:

• Various small updates, also added Pilot3 tests

Weekly development(s) focus

• Discussion on containers support in DIRAC (Simon, Andrew)
  • Simon as origin proposal submitted https://github.com/DIRACGrid/DIRAC/issues/3381
    • Quite detailed technical description of the tasks that need to be done in order to support containers
    • All 3 use cases listed at the beginning seem to be valid
    • We have been talking mostly about Singularity containers, and possibly about Docker containers (there's an advertised compatibility between the two anyway). Singularity containers are quickly becoming a de-facto standard. They also have a repository, even though docker one can also be used, and that CervVM-FS seems to be the simplest way of deployment
  • Andrew went to Pre-GDB on containers in WLCG
    • Atlas and CMS pushing for widespread deployment
    • Needs anyway CC7 first as host, which is not obvious
    • Concerns about cases not yet fully tested like containers inside containers
  • GridPP: high interest, right now using workaround
  • LHCb: we have cases of users already testing their analysis using docker containers, that would be glad to run them on the Grid
  • Belle2 far behind, no plans yet, but in PNNL they use containers for running on HPC
  • CTA: interested, but no steps made yet
  • ILC: interested, but no steps made yet, not known if users use it already
  • Philippe comments that for small VOs using containers is probably the easiest choice as there would be no need to support many platforms like we do now
  • Chris comments that the number of allowed containers should not explode
  • Andrei comments that there's quite some development to be done before reaching that point
  • no high priority, but Simon, also with Andrew, will take care of the developments, which will start not before mid of September. Tests, and integration will be done by all the team.
  • Checkpointing end of September or beginning of October.

DIRAC: current PRs and tasks being worked on

• Nothing else to report (all PRs discussed)

AOB

• Next BiLD-Dev meeting will be held next Thursday, and agenda is already there

LHCbDIRAC

• Next LHCbDIRAC version will be called v9r0
  • First will be done based on v6r19-pre3
• Client release of LHCbDIRAC
  • Asked about stopping deployment to AFS from v9r0
    • Ben will discuss it at the Core SW: no answer yet?
  • Deployment in dev area of CVMFS for pre-releases: decided to NOT pursue it
• LHCbGrid:
  • Mess, and more mess. Right now, the only working version is gcc49. Decided not to touch further for now.