Agenda

Minutes in bold.

CASA/JIVE VLBI Coordination Meeting

Attendance: George, Ilse, Des, Mark, Ryan, Justin, Neal

2021 Jun 2 @ 1400UTC

Logistics

  • Future Meeting dates (usually last Wed of the month):
    • 2021 Jul 7 @ 1400 UTC
    • 2021 Jul 28? (entering vacation season....)

General Admin

  • General Status w.r.t. Coronavirus measures
    • NRAO/ALMA:
      • NRAO in North America continuing work@home; protocols relaxing for vaccinated staff.
      • ALMA has started science observing "Initial + Basic Science Operations Phase"
    • ASTRON/JIVE
      • Science/computing staff continuing work-at-home for now. Vaccinations starting!
  • CASA Release Schedule
    • CASA 5.8/6.2: Released on 2021 Jun 1
    • CASA 6.3: "Bug-fix" release ~June-ish?
      • Tickets must be in test by ~next week for inclusion
      • NB: no 5.9!
      • OSX 10.14, 10.15 (11=Big Sur unlikely)
    • CASA 6.2.1: ALMA-specific (PL) bug-fixes ~August
    • CASA 6.4: End of year?
      • OSX 10.15, 11 (CAS-13405)
    • Release version OS/python matrix (from Ryan)
  • Requirements collation: 2020 May 07 document / VLBA Costing/Prioritization (2020 May 21)
    • Ready for updates (completed items to appendix, etc.), circulation
  • (Ryan) CNGI/ngCASA Status:
    • Demo 'release' of prototype package status?
      • (Ryan) Delayed by managing a very large dataset for benchmarking, also cluster upgrade, etc.
      • (Ryan) Also Dask conference 2 weeks ago. Growing fast! Radioastronomy workstop, incl. ngcasa talk. Possible coordination on data structures (Simon Perkins, MSv2)? Interesting concerns about python adaptability/flexibility, avoiding for loops, etc.....
      • (Mark) Intending to look at VLBI datasets via converter. Some initial exploratory work here. Initially some difficulties with casacore... Some basic data examination, so far.
    • FYI: CNGI Development instructions
  • Admin issues
    • (Ryan) Revised CASA Management Plan (reinforcing development practices, including documentation, correctness standards, code reviews, limited use of engineering tasks, monthly releases); final version due in a few weeks.
    • casa6 build instructions coming soon!
      • (Mark) RHEL6 issues... (Ryan: vmware-based, so should be immune...)
  • Meetings/workshops of relevance
    • n/a
  • VLBI Integration Branch: CAS-13295
  • Other?

Development

  • CASA 6.3+6.4 prioritization complete
  • Ongoing maintenance/development CASA 6.3/6.4 JIRA (VLBI) Status
    • Nearly ready for validation/merge-to-master for 6.3 (waiting for 5.8/6.2 branching)
      • (Mark, CAS-13270) Handle NaNs in imported Tsys. Merged.
      • (Des, CAS-13224?) memory management improvements in fringefit. (already essentially validated by Janssen)
      • (Mark, CAS-8550) Pulsar-binned and single-IF import now not blocked by sys power support in exportuvfits; Need to coordinate casacore merge after 5.8/6.2 branching (pending CAS-11860?). The casacore uprev in progress on CAS-13442. Merged
      • (Mark, CAS-13383) Mixed polarization basis conversion for JIVE. Merged.
      • Need to push these to/thru verification, to be poised for validation and merge (George to liase with Jen on validation)
    • Ongoing for 6.3+6.4
      • (George, CAS-12735; 12765,12553; 12954,10276) Frequency meta-info (work continues...)
      • (Mark, CAS-13466) AveragingTvi2 preavg opt-out for fringefit: Ready for verification and validation.
        • (George: no-rates mode ok? Should be ok.)
        • (CAS-13287 chunking error in AveragingTvi2 for certain conditions; under separate investigation)
      • (Mark, CAS-13266) Per-scan interpolation via overloading per-obs mechanism.
        • Awaiting review by George
      • (Des, CAS-13056) Overlapping solution intervals
        • Initial implementation awaiting review by George
      • (Neal, CAS-13005) Handle refant exhaustion better. Neal to add warnings for pathological case
      • (Mark, CAS-13473) (new) Permit smoothcal for accor solutions: Mark arranging verification test
        • Justin: context: USNO user finding f.d. scale very sensitive (20%!) to smoothing accor solutions or not (in AIPS). Unclear if accor solutions should really need smoothing; probably related to something pathological in the specific data itself which pivots sensitively on smoothing AC-related info, e.g., RFI.
      • (Neal, CAS-13005) rerefant needs better warnings for continuity pathologies. Mark has provided Neal a good example.
    • Underway for 6.3+6.4
      • (Des, CAS-13361) Polarization combination for fringefit. (deploy for fringefit 6.3, other things for 6.4?)
        • Awaiting review by George
      • (Mark, CAS-13003). EOP update (6.4).
    • Other/Miscellaneous
      • (Mark/Des) Using external storage managers (DysCo) with CASA 6. (Offringa). Prospects for adding to casacore?
      • CAS-12485: OTF weight munging for solve (Can we complete validation and deploy? Des seeking interested users at JIVE)
      • (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

-- GeorgeMoellenbrock - 2021-06-02

This topic: Software/CASA > Software > WebHome > CASA_VLBI_Coord > VLBICoord_2021Jun02_Minutes
Topic revision: 2021-06-02, GeorgeMoellenbrock
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