CASA User Testing Meeting Minutes - 2013-09-03, 09:00 Socorro / 11:00 Charlottesville

Agenda

Participants

Present: Mark Rawlings, Adam Leroy, Jen Donovan Meyer, Tony Remijan, Jeff Kern, Steve Myers

Apologies: Crystal Brogan (Chile), Juergen Ott (away), Bryan Butler (conflicting meeting)

Locations

• Socorro: AOC-317; IP: 146.88.16.8 <- Room not be available. <- AOC-280 used instead
• Charlottesville: Room 331; IP: 193.33.117.19

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Minutes (Main Points Only)

Status

• The August casapy-stable has been published: casapy-stable r26232. wvrgcal is currently broken in the stable. The next casapy-stable code commit deadline will be September 15th.
• Latest casapy-test published: casapy-test r26325.
• Known Issue: If both rpms and a tar casapy-stable are installed on the same RHEL 5.x system, and their versions do not match, you will see the failure described in CAS-5445 when starting CASA from the tar. You will not see this issue when starting casa from the rpms.

Number of CASA Jira tickets with "Ready To Test" status (including EA, EU, JAO, Software-only tickets) prior to meeting: 66.

Number of CASA Jira tickets with "Ready To Test" status (including EA, EU, JAO, Software-only tickets) following meeting: 59.

News / Any Other Business

• Crystal is heading down to Chile for a 3-month period. Mark will cover for her as the onsite CV testing contact point (in consultation with her).
• Minimal/no meeting attendance from Socorro, due to in-house coordination meetings being pushed back a day due to the holiday.
• Eric Villard is back in the office at the JAO from today.

The Google tracking spreadsheet is available here.

PART 1: Items To Be Covered During The Meeting

Ready to Close Items

N.B. The following items will not be worked through one-by-one. Attendees should identify any items they wish to keep open during the meeting.

• CAS-5044 (Jul): Flagdata mode='clip' should allow WEIGHT as an option for datacolumn. Currently ARTT (July stable+ package). Tested by Todd, who had written a script to modify copy the WEIGHT column over to the WEIGHT_SPECTRUM column. Seems to work OK, although it provides slightly scary warning messages for certain combinations of the default "ABS_ALL" and non-complex type columns. <- Resolved as done following the meeting.
• CAS-5525 (Aug): sdbaseline: list available options of operation on verify plot in document. Currently RTT. Not yet available in test/stable package, but minor documentation change only. Documentation text change reproduced explicitly in the Jira ticket, though, and it's very clear. <- Resolved as done following the meeting.

Items Overdue for Status Updates (i.e. the "Nag List")

• VLA No Progress CAS-4790 (Jun): Add support for time variable calibrators for Perley-Butler 2013 standard for setjy - Subtask of CAS-5156. Currently ARTT. In current stable. Bryan (or maybe Claire?) to test. <- Bryan will be getting this issue "unstuck", maybe with the help of analysts.
• CAS-5134 (Apr/Jun): viewer crashes after certain interactive steps - Currently tracked as as ARTT. Lots of work done and comments on this in the past. Testing being done by Josh and Kristina. Kristina has provided some feedback of reproducible failure modes, the developer is looking at it, and Kristina to test functionality in the meantime. Ticket had been assigned to Kristina for testing purposes (may need to change ulimit/rlimit), but is currently back with the developer for bugfix work while she's testing functionality. Ongoing. Jeff to follow up with Darrell about if it is possible to get core files to be generated on failure. <- This is ongoing effort. There is nothing preventing the creation of core files (which could be attached by testers when available, as they help). A number of specific viewer crash modes have been addressed in other, more specific tickets.
• CAS-5110 (May): Remy's been providing examples of problem cases, and possible approaches to solutions (with Adam). Input Required. Remy still to send Mark some recommendations text for tool documentation purposes. Some calculations done, work ongoing. <- Work done by Remy. Status is "Open", but some still awaiting some text from him.
• CAS-2252 (May): calculate the rotation measure. VLA item. Still awaiting input from Science. Input Required. Preshanth has been working on this, and will hopefully be able to report back on this in the next week or so.
• CAS-5216 (Jun): moment image has malformed header. Some testing done by Remy, ticket currently ARTT again. Image units were still needed - should be in now. Adam to test. <- Adam's looked at this. Thinks that the main feature request has been fulfilled, so resolved following the meeting. The odd other gripe has been raised: separate tickets to be created as needed.
  
• CAS-4754- MSTransform
  • CAS-4765 (Jul): Add capability in MSTransform framework to combine spectral windows. To be tested as part of CAS-4754. ARTT. Assigned to Juergen for testing. <- Juergen was out this week.
• CAS-5222 (Jul): imhead: cannot add beammajor, beamminor, beampa keywords and values to TP image. Commit: r25741; Available in casapy-test r25953+. ARTT. Tester: Ed. Reminder recently posted to ticket. <- Needs another reminder in the next few days.
• CAS-4141 (May): SD: Sideband separation algorithm for DSB receivers. Shinya had been testing. Latest fix was r2835 to ASAP; included in casapy-test 25953+. ARTT. Tester: Shinya. <- Shinya will work on it next week.

Items Currently Undergoing Testing

• CAS-3046 (Jun): Support and use of ephemeris table when available. Currently ARTT in casapy-stable (May 2013; r24824). Being tested by Dirk et al., with input from Bryan. Some testing done, and it seems to generally work, but additional minor fixes were committed as r25140 and r25160. One more bit of testing is still needed, but the relevant PI is currently away on vacation and will be back soon.
• CAS-4959 (Jun): imregrid: When using image templates, the default shape used should be that of the template (not the input image). Currently ARTT. Included in June+ stable package. Being tested by Mark, awaiting feedback from developer. Ongoing. <- Dev has looked at this, and made suggestions for testing (tested example was exposing as yet unsupported features). To be retested with more conservative datasets.
• Upgraded to BLOCKER CAS-5213 (Jul): feathering GUI (casafeather) upgrade. ARTT. Juergen to close out: test and write documentation. Brian Mason will be in Socorro for a week in September to help out with this.
• CAS-5143 (Jul): update simobserve documentation to clear up some confusion. Currently RTT, pending availability of next(?) test package. Note: Only a documentation change (r25240). Previously tested by Kim. Documentation further tweaked, ticket assigned to Jen. <- Resolved as done.
• CAS-5415 (Jul): Only one spectrum shown for "flux density". Fix committed as r25723, now in current casapy-test (25953+) and stable. ARTT. To be tested by Adam. <- Tested and complete.
• CAS-5121 (Jul): Add new possible post-imaging step to imaging task to smooth to a common restoring beam. Currently ARTT. Tester: Adam. <- Tested and (pending some documentation cleanup) complete. Set to "Open" in the meantime and passed back to the dev.
  
• CAS-5502 (Aug): Velocity regridding in viewer sometimes not available. Fix committed (r26045). Currently ARTT in August stable+ package. Tester: Adam. <- Tested. Needs more work and so passed back to dev. Set back to "Open".
• CAS-5125 (Jul): Make frequency an axis display option (in the viewer). Currently ARTT in August stable. Tester: Adam. <- Tested. Needs more work and so passed back to dev. Set back to "Open".
• CAS-3116 (Jun): Comprehensive computation of spectral index from image(s). Laura Perez is testing this for the VLA. ALMA will hold off on testing this for now, pending the VLA testing. Latest fix committed Aug 14th (r26067). Currently ARTT.
• CAS-5324 (Jul): Viewer: make behavior of dock widgets (animator, cursor tracking, and regions) consistent. Currently ARTT. To be tested through routine use. To be resolved if no complaints before Sep. stable availability.
• CAS-2722 (Jul): Viewer profile tool and ascii have weird order for multiple cubes. Should be ARTT in casapy-test for testing of latest commit (r26201). Tester: Crystal.
• CAS-5406 (Jul): importfits "make casa-style 4d". Moved back to RTT. Latest commit (r26289) now available in casapy-test (r26325+) package for user testing. Some discussion between Dirk and Remy on this ticket. Remy to test.
• CAS-5312 (Jun): sdimaging: enable specifying output frequency frame. Currently ARTT again. While Eric Villard is on holiday, Daniel Espada had done some testing. Latest fix (r26247) now available for user testing in the current casapy-test package (r26325+).
• CAS-5178 (Jul): Improved Support for multiple Cubes. Already mostly works; latest fix was r26229. Recently set back to RTT, pending the next casapy-test package. Tester: Adam. <- Tested. Works. Resolved as done.
• CAS-5176 (Jul): Setting of rest frequency from display panel. Latest commit: r26305 should now be ARTT in casapy-test (r26325+). Tester: Adam. <- As requested by Adam, ticket passed to Tony for a second opinion.
• CAS-5540 (Aug): Viewer crashes when image toggle selected if spectral tool open. Blocker issue. Fix committed. Currently ARTT in casapy-test (r26325) package. Tester: Crystal.
• CAS-4754- MSTransform subtasks:
  • CAS-4845 (July): Add capability in MSTransform framework to change the reference frame. To be tested as part of CAS-4754. ARTT. Ticket with Juergen; tester TBD <- Tested by Adam, resolved as done.

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PART 2: Items Listed for Informational Purposes (note that these will not be specifically discussed during the meeting unless someone raises them)

Items Pending Tester Assignment

• VLA No Progress CAS-5117 (May): Association of Syspower Cal entries with scan / field in table or during apply. Currently ARTT in casapy-stable (May 2013; r24824+). Information posted to ticket by developer. VLA item, so ticket was assigned to Bryan, now passed to Steve to reassign. Emmanuel had been approved to work on this, but won't have time. Rick was to provide data, Claire was going to look at it. Might need some else assigning? <- Steve will figure out how to proceed with this one. He may end up testing this himself.
• CAS-4808 (Jun): make ImageBeamSet simpler - Underlying software modification, but can definitely be tested by users. Currently ARTT. Critical item. Ticket with Juergen, pending user testing assignment. Note: testing this item may require a fairly experienced user. <- Multibeam datasets - Adam to test.
• CAS-2600 (Jul): SetJy - Case-insensitivity in field source names. Currently ARTT. Most recent commit was r25640. Available in current casapy-test (r25753+), and August stable. Should just be a matter of checking case sensitivity. Ticket passed to Juergen for user tester assignment. <- Sarah Wood (new CV data analyst) to test.
• CAS-5141 (Jul): Provide the way that sdflag keeps all rows in the input dataset and only modify flag information. Currently ARTT in casapy-test (r25753). Assigned to Eric Villard (August stand-in still TBD, if it isn't soon rendered a moot point). <- Since Eric's now back in the office, the ticket can stay with him. Reminder posted.
• CAS-5159 (Jul): Add Support for Scaife and Heald low frequency standard. VLA-only item. Currently ARTT - in current casapy-test, but not in July stable. Probably needs external testers (Huib, Scaife, and/or possibly Frazer?), so assigned to Juergen to reassign. Subtask of CAS-5156. <- Ticket passed to Steve for reassignment (probably to Huib).
• CAS-5441 (Aug): Testing ticket for imhead mode="del". ARTT, since now available in casapy-test r25953+. Ticket passed to Juergen for tester assignment. Tester TBD. Can probably be tested together with CAS-5444 (see next). <- Adam to test.
• CAS-5444 (Jul): Testing ticket for imhead(mode="add"). Commit: r25741; available in casapy-test 25953+. ARTT. Subtask of CAS-4297. Ticket with Juergen. Tester TBD. <- Adam to test.
• CAS-5487 (Aug): sdimaging: image header stores a wrong unit. Workaround fix provided. Currently ARTT with August stable package. Tester: TBD. Ticket passed to Daisuke for reassignment. <- Brian Mason added as a watcher for North America.
• CAS-4961 (Aug): imregrid: axis ordering of data cubes appears to be inconsistent. Currently ARTT with August stable package. Tester: TBD (probably Mark or Adam). <- Mark to test.
• CAS-5545 (Aug): MS to scantable filler should apply FLAGROW of scantable to FLAG of MS. Currently ARTT in casapy-test (r26325+) package. Tester: TBD. <- Ticket passed to Daisuke for reassignment.
• CAS-5535 (Aug): Remove freq_tolsr parameter from sd.splitant(). Currently RTT, pending a user-testable package. Tester: TBD. Ticket passed to Daisuke for reassignment.
• CAS-5503 (Aug): imregrid should determine asap in the process if the input image and output image will not overlap. Currently RTT, pending a user-testable package. Tester TBD. <- Adam to test.
• CAS-5547 (Aug): Testing ticket for AnnRectBox fix. Fix committed. Subtask of CAS-5541. Currently RTT, in casapy-test (r26325) package. Tester: TBD. <- Amy Mioduszewski to test.
• CAS-5520 (Aug): impv incorrect masking. Fix committed. Currently RTT, pending a user-testable package. Tester: TBD (Nathan?) <- Tested by Nathan and found to work. Resolved as done.
• CAS-3517 (Aug): Improve remapping interface (Cal libraries). Currently ARTT in casapy-test r26325+. Tester: TBD. <- Tester: Steve.
• CAS-4754- MSTransform subtasks <- Integrated testing to be done in Europe.
  
  • CAS-5013 (Jul): "cvel handling of different sensitivity spw". ARTT in July stable+. Subtask of CAS-4754. Ticket passed to Juergen for user testing assignment (Dirk?). <- To be tested by Dirk et al. in Europe as part of the general MSTransform testing effort there.

Unable to Test Items

• CAS-5123 (May): Support for On the Fly Mosaics. Currently ARTT. JAO (ALMA) and Socorro (VLA) to test. Awaiting suitable data from ALMA. Steve has done some work on this for VLA. Still waiting on data; unlikely to be fully tested before release.
• CAS-4636 (Oct 2012): Elevation dependent opacity application w/ Tsys. Still awaiting input from Science (since February). On Hold. Awaiting data.
• CAS-5084 (May): Testing multi-term support in pclean. Lots of feedback supplied by Kristina and Claire. Currently On Hold and assigned to Kumar pending class refactoring.

Upcoming Ready to (Re)Test Items

• CAS-5335 (Jul): CASA Region Text File pixel sizes not handled properly. BLOCKER. Currently listed as "Open". Prioritized to be addressed in next few weeks.
• CAS-5228 (Jul): use masks in feather and transfer to output. Critical item. Currently ARTT. In July stable+. Remy's looking at this, and has a question out to the developer. <- Dev has replied with a fix. Will need to be retested.
• CAS-5142 (May): issues with the spectral profile tool (for inclusion in 4.2 release). Currently set back to Open. Tester: Jen. One small issue reported to remain with window ordering, so set back to "Open" for now. Not a high priority item now, though. <- Tested and resolved as done.
• CAS-4081 (Aug): Create tool / view that allows management of open images and changing the image stack. Set back to open following testing in casapy-test r25953+. Tester: Mark Lacy. Punch-list of issues identified.
• CAS-5276 (Jul): Loading region file with box, ellipse and poly shapes produces warning and does not load. Tested by Anand. Seems to mostly work but a few issues remain. Open. Previously ARTT. Ticket currently back with developer.
• CAS-5111 (May): Implement autoboxing capability. Currently RTT. This one had previously been ARTT, and Crystal had looked at this and provided a problem case. A fix had been put in and tested by Steve. He has provided feedback: seems to sort of work, but still fiddly right now. Ticket is currently Open, assigned to Jeff. <- Interface definition still somewhat ongoing (when to trigger, what pieces of info are needed). In the meantime, this is to be set to "Ready To Test" and assigned to Tony, so that he can try it with both the M100 and Orion datasets.
• CAS-4754- MSTransform
  • CAS-4900 (Jun): Add capability in MSTransform framework to apply channel average. To be tested as part of CAS-4754. Adam has been testing this. Some follow-up work done by the developers. Ongoing. Set back to Open, while the developers investigate a couple of oddities. Fix committed as r26326.
  • CAS-5172 (Jun): Add capability for fftshift to regridding portion of MSTransform. To be tested as part of CAS-4754. Juergen's done some testing of this, but Adam could help if necessary. Some follow-up work done by the developers. Ongoing. Currently Open. <- Item added to list following meeting.

Other Blockers

• CAS-4946 Crash on Mac OS X when virtual model requested. BLOCKER. Recently re-checked by Nathan, and it now sounds as if this still affects Mac OS X 10.6, but not 10.7 or 10.8.

-- MarkRawlings - 2013-08-29