Runjob Technical Meeting
23 Nov 2004
Present: Dave, Jerry, Anzar, Vijay, Greg, Eric, Peter


(1) Shahkar 2.3/3.0 and changes made by Greg
       -CMS McRunjob changes...

       -Eric change all apply(,,) functions and replace with f(*,**) syntax.

       -Jerry left comments in the code:  DictCompareInterface is implemented 
         by two different classes differently.
       -pylint all code before it goes in.  
       -Greg needs to reread the coding standards vis a vis the variable names.
             -Jerry and Dave will look over the coding standards and turn off obsolete  
              warnings in pylint.
        -import ConfiguratorProperties as ConfiguratorDescription in Shahkar.
             -This should be OK.  

(2) D0Runjob progress

       -Getting Shreek stuff running, Iain has a Reco tarball to test on.  
       -Release to Dugan before the Nov 30 meeting.  (This Friday.) 
       -Thanksgiving at Dave's.  
       -Been using a lot of MCPS code.   What can become generic?
               -Schedulers, MCPSManager, ScriptObjectBuilder, ScriptObjectOperator
               -Uses it's own version of NameResolver (class based) 
               -Freeze MCPS features until we document what we have already.

(2.5)  MCPS Progress

        -Does it need to go into the common repository?
             -Big discussion;  after end of project Eric will stay on as maintainer.
             -No more than Eric can support directly should go into Shahkar.
                     -If it is under active development (Shreek, MCPS) should go 
                      into new repository.
             -Common package by January.
         -Production needs testing.  (Can Anzar check if this official production.) 
             -MCPSprod is a subpackage of MCPS that will run CMS production.
             -We need documentation
             -Ready to deploy by end of year - alert Tony in meeting.

(3) Macro language/Shreek design ideas and planning

      -Why macro instead of using the Python API directly?
           -API layer has to catch exceptions and do some error handling.
           -This is less work in the long run than maintaining a real language.
           -We get a lot of features for nothing: 
                    -interactive, pydb
           -We have to transfer the feature for provenance.
           -Will users be happy using Python instead of 
           -Think about this for Monday.
                -People can experiment with this before Monday.

       -Control points
                -expressed as XML file in job directory.
       -Parameter resolution
                -Need a resolution dictionary in the scriptObject;  what is the relation
                 to the Shreek XML dictionary
       -These become part of the scriptObject.
       -Short meeting on this next week also.  
     

(4) Documentation
        -For example, we were asked today how one goes about adding a
scheduler to McRunjob in CMS.  Is there a strategy of documentation for
small issues like this?