NAUG "Testers" Meeting

Date: 2002-11-06
Time: 1300 MST

Minutes:

1. NAUG organizational issues
   The issue of whether "testers-only" meetings were useful was discussed,
   with the conclusion that this may be useful from time to time to deal
   with controversial topics.  In general, it will probably evolve toward
   having meetings in the alternate slots (2 weeks from the main NAUG meeting)
   that concentrate more on scientific issues like the requirements and
   auditing to which AIPS++ staff are welcome (putting on thier scientific
   staff "hats").

2. AIPS++ Technical Review
   o Target for January (hopefully late January!)
   o Fomalont & Cotton head committee to define scope and procedures
     incl. McMullin, Myers, Shepherd, Prestage, Radziwill, Glendenning
   o aim to have requirements and eval ready for this
   o is it useful to have a "test project" (e.g. 4band wide-field) or
     would this require too much design time beforehand to make a sensible
     conclusion - could we use the IRAM experience instead as a
     proof-of-concept?
   o Solicited NAUG suggestions on topics - send to Ed.

3. VLA requirements/evaluation
   o Draft by Brogan/Shepherd/Myers
   o Assignments for sections:

   1. Operations - Fomalont (benchmarking), Chandler (interface, etc.)
   2. Data Handling - Myers/Butler (format,in/ex), Claussen (data examination)
   3. Cal & Edit - Taylor (gain calibration, polarimetry), Hibbard (spectral
      line), Frail (flagging), Chandler (atmosphere)
   4. Imaging - Shepherd, Fomalont, Butler, Brogan
   5. Analysis & Vis - Brogan, Brisken, Claussen
   6. Doc & Help - Hibbard, Claussen, Shepherd
   7. Special - Butler (solar sys), Brisken (astrometry), Claussen
      (simulation), Ulvestad (pipeline)

4. Subsystem scientists
   o detailed discussion deferred
   o base off of VLA Eval assignments?

5. Benchmarking
   o Sanjay stated that the imager benchmarking was checked in and documented,
     and promised to forward the info to the list.  He said we was now working
     on 
   o For the benchmarking and performance part of the VLA Evaluation,
     should gather fiducial datasets (perhaps those used by Sanjay), for
     the testing (Ed?)

6. GBT
   o Commissioning Review next week (attend by Video-line if possible!)
   o "NAUG" GBT requirements/evaluation draft, Myers/McMullin will distribute
     this Friday (Nov 8)
   o NAUG members to help with GBT testing - Hibbard, Dyer.  Bring CV 
     single-dishers into NAUG - Hogg, Lizst?
   o perhaps have GBT-oriented NAUG meetings?

7. AIPS++ Tutorial Series
   o focus on data paths or on modules - NAUG preferred data paths
   o propose for next 6 lectures (start 4 Dec)
     3 x VLA, 1 x GBT, 1 x Engineering, 1 x other (pipeline?)
     This sounded good to NAUG, noting that Jeff Kern has used glish for
     pulsar stuff.
   o What parts do we think are worth showing, e.g. how robust should
     things be before advertising? (we did not get a chance to discuss
     this topic, deferred)

8. AIPS++ Development Plan and progress report
   o will have to descope given loss of Kemball and Sessoms (but Sanjay
     transferred)
   o try to finalize this week
   o will revisit 2.0 NAUG priorities (by email)
   o Did not get a chance to discuss these in detail during this meeting.

9. AIPS++ news (did not discuss due to time pressure)
   o Public talks in system followup
       - daily/docs/presentations/public
       - Link from Main page to tour
   o Completed targets:    
       - new imager test in assay - very thorough
       - msconcat accepts input frequency and position tolerance
       - uv-plane continuum subtraction - coming very soon
       - fields function in misc.g (gives field names in glish records
         in a more readable format)
       - listed version numbers within a build have been made more sensible 
   o Defects:
       - (most of these were not bugs or were unreproducible)
       - AOCso04074 when use circular mask image, mem seemed to deconvolve 
       - AOCso03849 weight function does not work as shown in documentation
       - AOCso03793 link to imager is wrong
       - AOCso03169 msselect argument in setdata doesn't appear to work
       - AOCso00159 Names should not have embedded underscores

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