Agenda

CASA/JIVE VLBI Coordination Meeting

2020 September 30 @ 1400UTC

Logistics

• Future Meeting dates (usually last Wed of the month):
  
  • 2020 Oct 28 @ 1400 UTC? (beware end of DLST in NL)
    
  • 2020 Nov 25 @ 1400 UTC?

General Admin

• General Status w.r.t. Coronavirus measures
  • NRAO/ALMA:
    
    • NRAO in North America continues in Phase 1 of "Return to Full Operations" (work from home where possible, no in-person meetings, no travel, etc.)
      
      • RTFO Phase 2 ("Steady-state" in "New Normal", essential travel, in-person meetings) Not before early 2021, at best.
    • ALMA developing array restart plans, expected to take many months...
  • ASTRON/JIVE
    • Science/computing staff continuing work-at-home for now
• CASA Release Schedule
  • CASA 5.7/6.1: Has been released. (2020 Aug 20)
    
    • CASA 6.1.1 for ALMA PL being exercised
    • CASA 6.1.2(/5.7.x?) w/ polcal fix (VLASS, ALMA?) pending
  • CASA 5.8/6.2: Development ongoing.
    • Should be wrapping up development ~now
    • Tickets reviewed below...
• JIRA workflow migration (simplification) complete
  • Some ticket states have evolved (no "sub-tasks")
  • Package build (CASA 6) triggering ("Package" field via ticket "Edit")
  • Refer any issues/problems to George
• (Mark) Requirements collation status?
  • 2020 May 07 document
  • (George) Should complete re-numbering to better align with prioritization exercise from May 2020
  • (George, Justin) Need to forward Requirements Doc and prioritization to Jen Donovan-Meyer, as input to Stakeholder process for CASA 5.9/6.3
• (Ryan) CNGI Status:
  • CNGI Study Closeout process (2021+) being prepared, including: prototype demo package of basic flagging, calibration, & imaging; review of C++ code reuse prospects cf demos; concrete ngCASA specification project mapping ngVLA (and retrospective ALMA) requirements, and including a multi-year schedule, staffing plan, etc.
    • FYI: CNGI and ngCASA repos and docs recently merged to simplify navigating that landscape
  • FYI: CNGI Development instructions
• Pending admin issues
  
  • DIY casa5 tarball build instructions can be found here
  • casa6 build issues: formal instructions for plotms, CASAshell, casa5/6 co-exist, c++ unit tests in casa6
  • (Mark) Google drive packages?
    • Yes, for download efficiency
• Upcoming meetings/workshops of relevance
  • CASA User Committee: 2020 Oct 20-23 (virtual)
  • JIVE VLBI Workshop 2020 Nov 2-6. (virtual)
    • VLBA/NRAO staff being encouraged to attend!
    • (NB: Some polcal modes broken in CASA 5.7...)
• Other admin?

Development

• CASA 5.8/6.2:
  
  • JIRA (VLBI) Status
    • CAS-12736: accor test needs some VLBA data for proper test
      • Will use BA123a, which has been added to DR
    • (Mark) CAS-8537: gain curve
      • ~Finished? (gencal integration ok?!)
      • (concat, mstransform ok?). good enough for single VLBA datasets, for now. (small casacore change pending (importfitsidi))
    • (George) CAS-12735: Frequency meta-info (includes generalized fix for CAS-12553, and several other bug tickets)
      • Making progress on defining solve context frequency meta info from VisibilityIterator2 services before iteration over solution intervals; nearing deployment
      • Some coordination may be required in fringefit
    • (Mark) CAS-13184): accor corrdepflags.
      • Already fixed by Mark (default still False); currently in ver/val
    • (Des) CAS-12765 (wide-spaced spws): adding choice of new aggregation method, waiting for freq meta fix for proper validation
    • (George) CAS-12736 (revised accor test) Mark may be able to help with test deployment (cf gaincurve above). (George remains curious about OSX version discrepancies...)
    • (Mark) CAS-12989 (eMerlin crosshands) Validation nearly complete (Anita Richards). For proper ver test, need small, appropriate eMerlin dataset (hard to get at the moment).
    • (Mark) CAS-? (import of gaincurve) need (small!) 'standard' VLBA dataset to test importfitsidi need just a few scans, at 43 GHz (non-trivial gaincurve)
      
      • Justin will look into adding a small observation to upcoming (Friday, Oct 2?) test period
• Other development
  • CAS-12485: OTF weight munging for solve (Can we complete validation and deploy?)
    • Comparison with AIPS probably not needed, just need to confirm that intended weight adjustment and discernible and expected effect.
    • Des to raise disposition of this with Ilse, JIVE ops, etc. Maybe interested user(s) (EVN, EHT?) will emerge at upcoming workshop.
  • (Mark) Generalized polarization basis conversion
  • Other:
    • George to study what is needed in plotms for fringefit (CASR-537; may not require significant effort from Pam)
    • George/Justin to coordinate initial testing on CASR-463 (TEC) to better characterize basic requirements (also CAS-13040 re TEC retrieval changes)

AOB?

• n/a