CASA User Testing Meeting Minutes - 2014-06-03, 09:00 Socorro / 11:00 Charlottesville

Agenda

Participants

Present: Mark R, Jeff K.,Arielle, Adam, Jen

Apologies: Crystal (on travel), Todd (on travel), Brian (on travel), Scott S. (on travel), Remy (sick family)

Locations

https://staff.nrao.edu/cal/RoomListing.htm

• Socorro: AOC-317; IP: 146.88.6.8
• Charlottesville: Room 331; IP: 192.33.117.19

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Minutes (Main Points Only)

Status

• The third 4.3 Linux test package is now the current one: r29326 (casacore, code and gcwrap trunk changes up to r29256; asap trunk changes up to r2926).
• We also have a recent 4.2.2 pre-release package (r29810). This (most notably) contains some of George and Dirk's work on weights (the last of which will be made available in the next 4.2.2 pre-release, along with additional SD features). This can be accessed via the '-r' option, e.g. 'casapy -r4.2.2'. For a full list of 4.2.2 commits, see https://safe.nrao.edu/wiki/bin/view/Software/CASA/Casa422Patch
• 4.2.1 is the current public release version for both Linux and OS X.
  • If you are on a Red Hat 5 machine, you can access older versions via the '-r' option, e.g. 'casapy -r4.1.0'
  • If you are on Red Hat 6 and need CASA 4.1, run it from here: /home/casa/packages/RHEL5/release/casapy-41.0.24668-001-64b/casapy.

Number of CASA Jira tickets with "Ready To Test" status (including EA, EU, JAO, Software-only tickets, but excluding Pipeline) prior to meeting: 71.

Number of CASA Jira tickets with "Ready To Test" status (including EA, EU, JAO, Software-only tickets) following meeting: 71.

Agenda

• 4.2.2 testing regarded as higher priority than 4.3.
• Weights in 4.2.2. (See also CAS-4469) - Adam, Scott, Arielle. Status? Snag hit for ALMA DR step 7 regarding calwt that necessitates a second pre-release package (the fix should be in that).
• 4.2.2 Viewer and PlotMS testing (Urgent: Today/tomorrow.) - DAs yesterday.
  • CAS-6604 - Viewer parent, 5 subtasks
  • CAS-6605 - PlotMS parent, 2 subtasks
  • CAS-6492 - Viewer item (see below). Needs tester assigned. Provisionally assigned to Mark R., but needs a 10.8 Mac...
• split2 - Main ticket: CAS-6178 (currently parked with Mark R.). Testing: Jen w/ Mark L. The exact ticket assignments will be decided following the meeting. Additional note: the weights behavior in split2 may vary from the expected in the current/second pre-release packages (the code is being worked on, but may not make it into the next package). Adam will write a quick, simple test script that will check its behavior as part of standard reduction.
  • Relevant commits: r29317 - main implementation of split2; r29424 - Raise an exception if .flagversions exists in disk; r29484 - workaround in mstransform to convert numpy types in the split2 task until this is done in automatically in the conversion layer.
  • Dependencies:
    • CAS-6400 (new implementation to resize/re-index the POLARIZATION table)
    • CAS-6288 (affects the FLAG_CATEGORY column in the output)
    • CAS-6396 (seg faults when copying the POINTING table to an output MMS)
    • CAS-6543 (treats the input MMS as a monolithic MS instead of running in parallel)
  • Also need to test the following (old split) tickets, as split2 should incidentally address these too. (Testing to be done on split2, not split):
    • CAS-3666: split on spws gives errors for different correlation shapes.
    • CAS-6472: When splitting part of the channels out of ms, all visibility amplitude with FLAG=True become 0+0j
• Current status of imfit work? CAS-6124 and its subtasks. Dave had implemented suggested changes and they look OK (initially) to Brian Mason. Some problems reported in ticket, Dave had suggested opening new tickets (in CAS-3476). This item was not discussed at length, as Brian was out of town.
• CAS-5806 Mathematical prediction of post-gridding single dish beam. Blocker. Crystal and Kumar still in discussions. This is more a matter of understanding what the system is doing. In practice, this probably needs input from Todd as well. With him and Crystal away on travel, this is unlikely to move forward in the next couple of weeks or so.
• Other testing items specifically raised? None.

New Testing Assignments (see relevant section below)

• Assignment of other "To Be Assigned" Items Handled above. 4.3 testing item assignment was deferred, due to the urgency of 4.2.2 and the availability of free testers.
• The next meeting will take place on June 17th.
• Any Other Business
  • Adam noted that leaving the clean GUI open for long periods of time (say, 18 hours) seems to reliably result in a segfault. Jeff suspected that this was due to a dbus timeout, but recommended that Adam just go and talk to Darrell. Steve added that during the summer school, it was relatively easy for thew students to cause clean to hang by (e.g.) clicking on the "close window" button while it was running. Jeff replied that this should be addressed implicitly as part of the ongoing clean refactor, as the new clean will use a separate thread, which should (in principle) allow users to start the process, close the window, and then later come back and spawn a new window that will reconnect to the same process. This all depends on completion of the clear refactor, of course.

New Action Items Arising

• Divide up split2 tickets between Jen and Mark L.
• Adam to generate a simple DR script to check split2 (weights) behavior.

PART 1: Items To Be Covered During Meetings

Propose to Close Items

TBD.

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

• CAS-6038 (Feb 2014): 4,2/4.3 item. toolkit inline help now producing unreadable output. RTT. Tester: Mark R. (who really needs to do something about this and the next one...)
  • CAS-5418 (Dec): XML markup in inline tools documentation is not always parsed correctly. ARTT for 4.2/4.3. r28452. Tester: Mark R. Ongoing.
• CAS-6179 (Feb): Make a wrapper of hanningsmooth to use the MSTransform framework. ARTT in casapy-test r29326. Fix was r28604. Tester: Sarah (was Nathan).
• CAS-3116 (Jun): Comprehensive computation of spectral index from image(s). Laura Perez had been testing this for the VLA. ALMA will hold off on testing this for now, pending the VLA testing. Some testing done, problems still found. Had been bumped to 4.3. ARTT in casapy-test r29326. Tester: Kristina (in discussion with Laura). Jeff had agreed look at this with Kristina to get a better handle on how to go forward with this, which may result in more related tickets being spawned.
• CAS-5975 (Dec): impv: Support specifying input slice width as a world (angular) measure. ARTT in casapy-test r29326. Most recent commit was r28720. 4.3 item. Subtask of CAS-5835. Tester: Juergen.
• CAS-6395 (Apr): msmd.fieldsforscans segfaults casa if an argument is not supplied. ARTT in casapy-test r29326. Most recent commit was r29176. Tester: Paul.
• CAS-6134 (Apr): specfit array conformance error. ARTT in casapy-test r29326. Most recent commit was r29198. Tester: Juergen.
• CAS-5849 (Feb): implement spectral smoothing functions at task level. Subtask of CAS-5844. *ARTT", pending a new testing package. Tester: Juergen

Single Dish (to be skipped during the meeting)

• CAS-4735 (Nov): imsmooth needs additional option for single dish use. Subtask of CAS-5844 (above). ARTT. Tester: Shinya. Critical item. Code committed to trunk. 4.3 item. Some testing done. Ticket pinged.
• CAS-5139 (Sep): Proper handling of flag information in sideband separation algorithm. Low priority item. Subtask of CAS-1756. Currently ARTT; 4.2.2+ item. Tester: Bunyo
• CAS-6121 (Jan): sdgrid: 4.3 item. Latitude value in resulting scantable is reversed. ARTT. Tester: Shinya. Testing ongoing. Ticket pinged.

Items Currently Undergoing Testing

• CAS-5852 mstransform needs to have the keepflags=True/False capability of split. ARTT in the current casapy-test package (r29326). Fix was r28959. Tester: Steve
• CAS-2252 (May): calculate the rotation measure. VLA item. Currently ARTT Released for 4.2 "as is". Testing done by Preshanth. Report still pending. Tester: Preshanth. tester conclusion: looks good. Developer just looking into one last segfault under current casapy-test. Close to done.
• CAS-6020 (Jan 2014): 4.2 item. viewer - cross talk between animators. ARTT. Fix was r27981. Tester was to be Sarah, but it has already been found to work on Linux, so passed to Juergen to be included in the OS X (10.7 and 10.8) check-out. Looks good in 10.7, just needs the OK in 10.8. Close to done.
• CAS-3476 Reporting of uncertainties in IMFIT. Blocker. ARTT in casapy-test r29326. Fix was r29003. Related to CAS-5879. Tester: Brian (with others)
• CAS-5191 (Mar): Add gain threshold parameter to fluxscale. ARTT (r28480) in the latest 4.3 casapy-test. Tester: Crystal
• CAS-5844(Dec 2013): 4.3 imsmooth specification and testing targets. See also its subtasks. Currently "Open" and assigned to developer. Work in progress.

Input Required

• CAS-3613 (May): SD - Improve online help. Discussion ongoing.
• CAS-5720 (Oct): 4.2 item. change tooltip for new histogram functionality tool. ARTT. Tester: Paul (eventually). Switched to "Input Required" and passed to Crystal, so that she and Adam can comment on preferred behavior.
• CAS-5844(Dec 2013): 4.3 imsmooth specification and testing targets. See also its subtasks. See list of Action Items above. Currently "Open" and assigned to developer. Work in progress.
  • CAS-5848 (Dec 2013): 4.3. enhancements for imsmooth. Input Required from Science (via Mark R.). Subtask of CAS-5844. Currently assigned to Jeff. Juergen was to discuss preferred behavior with Dave while in Charlottesville.
  • CAS-962 (Nov): there should be a facility (task and/or tool) to convolve/cross-correlate two images along one axis (e.g. channel). Input Required. Ties specsmooth and imsmooth together. Jeff to write up his discussions with Steve. Ticket assigned to Jeff. Ticket is getting pinged monthly...
• CAS-5780 (Nov): Regridding a VLA image onto a GBT image fails to generate the expected warning message. Ticket repeatedly pinged. Input Required from Adam.
• CAS-5162 (Sep 2013): Improvements in flagging documentation and examples. Input Required from Science (via Jeff). This ticket has been left untouched since May 2013.
• CAS-5302 cs tool methods findcoordinate and findaxis should be restored to having a dictionary return value. Tester; Dirk.

Other Blockers

• CAS-6164 Running setjy several times on different source / spw selections sometimes clears previous model data Blocker. Open. Had previously been resolved, but reopened as it affects EVLA data too. Developer is looking into this now.
• CAS-5806 Mathematical prediction of post-gridding single dish beam. Blocker. Developer has done some modelling, but... ? This is a "blocker of a different kind..." High priority (blocking further development). Crystal and Kumar still in discussions.

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

"ARTT" Items Pending Tester Assignment

• CAS-6492: viewer fit restriction boxes not available for multiple fits. Should be ARTT in 4.2.2 pre-release. Needs a 10.8 Mac. Tester: TBD. (Nathan?)

Unable to Test Items

• CAS-4261 (Apr): after 4.0 release remove ia.setboxregion() . Change has been made. Plan is to leave ticket with Mark R. for now, and once this has been available to testers for a month, resolve it unless there are specific related problems encountered.
• CAS-6433 (Apr): Implement a function to derive Jy/K factor from amplitude calibrator observation. Input Required. Currently with developer. Who should be assigned this? Set to "On Hold" for now, pending further progress at the observatories.
• CAS-5379 - Subtle inconsistencies with other programs in Galactic Coordinates (Adam and Harvey). In a nutshell, shifts of ~0.2" are seen when taking data into other packages (e.g. DS9, IDL which both seem to agree with each other). It is unclear yet if this is an incorrect implementation in one or more packages, or possibly just a precision error. This is a subtle issue, and was pushed back to 4.3. Ticket stalled. Needs to be looked at by someone with lots of time. To be left as-is for now. This needs significant work, including new science papers on how to actually define the Galactic coordinate system? Needs casacore discussion, this can be part of that. Passed to Jeff for now.
• CAS-4636 (Oct 2012): Elevation dependent opacity application w/ Tsys. Still awaiting input from Science (since February). Had been "On Hold" since August, awaiting data. Switched to Input Required and passed to Crystal for comment. Bumped back to 4.3. Placed "On Hold" until further notice.
• CAS-5111 (May): Implement autoboxing capability. Currently On Hold. 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 set to "Ready To Test" and assigned to Tony, so that he can try it with both the M100 and Orion datasets. Lots of comments provided by John Lightfoot. A meeting has taken place on this, and it is an ongoing development topic. Ongoing development will be target of 4.3 Cycle. Crystal says that this will need significant effort and someone assigned to work with the developers for a while. Developer to work on the C++ and clean libraries. Jeff will follow up with Tak. Testing of this will probably be put into the Pipeline effort. Ticket passed to Jeff.
• CAS-4469 (Jun+ 2013): Split with channel averaging is creating spurious spectral features and weight is wrong when there has been channel flagging. Subtask of CAS-5245. On Hold. Tester: Crystal. Currently "On Hold" for user testing purposes, as it cannot be tested until weight spectrum is fixed (CASA 4.2.2).
• CAS-5879 include pixel rms in imfit fitting. Open. Subtask of CAS-6124. Currently with Claire, but testing has paused, as it has additional dependencies (e.g. CAS-3476).
• CAS-5084 (May): Testing multi-term support in pclean. Lots of feedback supplied by Kristina and Claire. On Hold (since August 2013) and assigned to Kumar pending class refactoring. Timeline for getting this off hold again requested. To be left on hold, pending the refactor.

Upcoming Ready to (Re)Test Items

Not Yet Assigned To Testers

• CAS-6491: Check behavior of listobs with respect to ephemeris objects. Currently ARTT. Tester: TBD? (Does this need a science tester?)
• CAS-5359 (May): total integration time calculated incorrectly. Commit r29868. RTT in 4.3, pending a user-testable package. Ticket parked with Mark R. for now. Tester: TBD (Jen?).
• CAS-5779 (May): imstat doesn't return a flux for an image with unit K. Commit r29844, RTT in 4.3, pending a user-testable package. Ticket parked with Mark R. for now. Tester: TBD (DA?).
• CAS-6484 (May): Add band center to displayed quantities in ListObs SPW summary. Commit r29772, RTT in 4.3, pending a user-testable package. Ticket parked with Mark R. for now. Tester: TBD (DA?).
• CAS-6497 (May): newestimates file not written by IMFIT in some cases. 4.3 item. Commit r29743, RTT in 4.3, pending a user-testable package. Ticket parked with Mark R. for now. Tester: TBD (Brian M.?).
• CAS-6531 (May): immoments could use a better error message. 4.3 item. Commit r29713, RTT in 4.3, pending a user-testable package. Ticket parked with Mark R. for now. Tester: TBD.
• CAS-5904 (May): msmd needs a fieldsforsource method. 4.3 item. Commit r29871, RTT in 4.3, pending a user-testable package. Ticket parked with Mark R. for now. Tester: TBD (DA?).
• CAS-6459 (May): msmd needs a method to get spw names. 4.3 item. Commit r29685, RTT in 4.3, pending a user-testable package. Ticket parked with Mark R. for now. Tester: TBD (DA?).
• CAS-6511: Implement function='flux' in ImageCollapser. Subtask of CAS-6354. RTT in 4.3. Tester: TBD.
• CAS-3666: split on spws gives errors for different correlation shapes. Blocker. Had been stuck On Hold, but is causing problems for the VLA pipeline now, so needs to be fixed as soon as possible. The awaited mstransform and split2 functionality has now been committed. 4.3 item. Now set to "RTT", pending a new user-testable package. Tester: TBD
• CAS-6342 (Mar): Viewer: Log Scale on Color Axis. RTT (r29379). Ticket with Mark R. for now. Tester: TBD.
• CAS-6290 (Apr): predictcomp bombs without write permission, and the prefix parameter does not work. Most recent 4.3 commit was r29300. RTT (in r29379). Ticket with Mark R. for now. Tester: TBD.
• CAS-6178 (Apr): Make a wrapper of split to use the MSTransform framework. Most recent commit was r29317. RTT (in r29379). Ticket with Mark R. for now. Tester: TBD. 4.2.2 item.
• CAS-3699 (Apr): region parameter in ia tools method should optionally use region in image. RTT (r29338), pending a new test package. Ticket parked with Mark R. for now. Tester: TBD
• CAS-6220 (Mar): Enable importasdm to read flags from the binary ASDM data. RTT (r28609). Ticket with Dirk for now. To be tested down in Chile by someone to be identified by Denis. On paper, the fix is included, but the current casapy-test package was throwing an error for importasdm, so leaving flagged as "RTT" for now.

Single Dish

See below "assigned" SD list.

Already Assigned To Testers

• CAS-4592: plotms on 10.7 issues. Half fixed due to Qt updates. Was "ARTT" in 4.2.1 and 4.2.2 pre-release. Open again now. Tester: Nathan
• CAS-5893 (May): 4.3 item. add the ability to write a spectral profile to an ASCII file in the ia tool. RTT in 4.3, pending a testable package. Commit was r29681. Tester: Todd (who will be away for a while).
• CAS-5836 (Nov): 4.3 item. Create new task imrebin. ARTT in casapy-test r29326. Commit to trunk was r29786. Probably a fairly high priority for testing, as there will almost certainly be a need to iterate on this. It was previously decided that this was to be left with Adam for now, to look at in June.

Tester: Adam

• CAS-3532 (Sep): Incorporation of Alma Primary Beam in Mosaic. Was ARTT, now Open again. Tester was Scott S., but ticket passed to Crystal for input. Some test imaging done. Switched from "Input Required" to "Open" and passed over to Kumar for more work from him. Ticket pinged.
• CAS-5334 (Feb): Ellipse regions have wrong width (RA). Second fix committed. Was ARTT in current casapy-test (r29326), set back to Open for input from developer. Tester: Paul
• CAS-5758 (Nov): 4.3(?) item. casafeather: the low convolved, and weighted needs to include the 'scaled' label. RTT again, pending a testable 4.3 package. Juergen and Brian talked about this. Most recent commit was r29475. Tester: Juergen.
• CAS-6073 Feb 2014): 4.3 item. Improve line overlay behavior (in viewer). "RTT" (r29478), pending a new testable package. Tester: Crystal. Tested in casapy-test r29326 and mostly works. A few additional tweaks in the latest commit still to be checked.
• CAS-5435 (Apr): request to make it easier to transfer beam from one image to another. Subtask of CAS-5433. RTT in 4.3, pending a new testable package. Most recent commit to trunk was r29383. Tester: Kumar.
• CAS-6232 (Mar): writing version numbers in GUIs. RTT in 4.3, pending a new testable package. Most recent commit to trunk was r29373. Tester: Juergen.
• CAS-5743 (Oct): 4.2 item. spectral viewer - once right mouse button was used, left mouse won't work anymore. RTT in 4.3, pending a new 4.3 casapy-test. The remaining issue is thought to be already fixed in the trunk. Tester: Sarah
• CAS-5731 (Oct): Loading DS9 region files into the viewer produces a warning and does not load. Open; 4.3 item. Ticket back with developer. Tester: Jen.
• CAS-5125 (Jul): Make frequency an axis display option (in the viewer). Previously ARTT, currently Open. Tester: Adam. Tested. Needs more work and so ticket back to dev. Bumped back to 4.3 (or later: "not for the foreseeable future").
• CAS-3517 (Aug): Improve remapping interface (Cal libraries). Input Required from developer. Tester: Steve. Some testing done, recommendations made, ticket back with developer. Discussion ongoing. Further callibrary work to be pushed out to 4.3 in Jira. Ticket pinged a few times now, on the period of about once/month.
• CAS-4663 (Oct 2012): specfit components/prompt/inf. *Open" again, following input from Juergen. Slated for work, but expensive in terms of effort, so not a priority right now..
• CAS-5127 (May): Document ia toolkit methods. Status In Progress. Mark is working on this. Most of Juergen's prioritized list of 26 items has been done. Dates to be added his future documentation updates. Prioritized by Mark. Ongoing. ia.regrid docs will require more work. Still needs code commits. Mark waiting on OS X 10.7 build. Bumped to 4.3 release, due to OS X-based build issues.
• CAS-4718 (April): Specfit should deal with channelization (minimum bar ~ warning). RTT, pending a new testable package. Most recent commit to trunk was r29337. Tester: Adam (for comment on wording; may need to be reassigned if additional testing needed).

Single Dish

• CAS-6485 (May): Use the center frequency of spws and it's velocity when selecting spw ID of scantable by frequency/velocity. Currently (A)RTT in 4.2.2 pre-release; testing ongoing. Tester: Bunyo. Ticket currently with Wataru for comment.
• CAS-6522 (May): Single dish: averaging weight by integration time is the wrong way. Currently RTT in 4.2.2 pre-release; will become ARTT in the next one. Passed to Bunyo for tester assignment. Tester: TBD.
• CAS-6486 (May): sdlist should list the center frequency of spw. Currently (A)RTT in 4.2.2 pre-release; testing ongoing. Tester: Bunyo.
• CAS-6303 (Mar): Segfault in reading recent GBT SDFITS files. ARTT (asap r2907) in casapy-test package (r29326). Bob Garwood to test. Ticket pinged.
• CAS-6181: SD processing needs to incorporate data weights. Currently set to RTT. Previously identified as an important ticket to track. Some extensive comments on ticket within the last month in response to Crystal's questions. Ticket passed to Wataru for unit test development. Mark to review status in detail?
• CAS-6168: enable plotter2 to change viewport size. ARTT (ASAP r2895) in casapy-test (r29326). Ticket with Takeshi. Ticket pinged.
• CAS-6348: sdmath needs non-nullstring for output file name. RTT in 4.3, pending a new test package. Ticket with Bunyo.
• List of many other new 4.3 SD items all currently set to RTT in Jira, all assigned to EA (Bunyo) for testing/testing reassignment; subtasks of CAS-5526: Re-design single dish task interfaces:
  • CAS-5489 - Refactor sdimaging (tsdimaging): Developer asked about resolving this.
  • CAS-5862 - sdbaseline task interface changes (tsdbaseline): ARTT in casapy-test (r29326). Tester: Hiroko.
  • CAS-5867 - sdflag2 task interface changes (tsdflag2): ARTT (since February). Tester: Shinya. Some testing done: sounds like it mostly works, but some questions raised about behavior. Discussion ongoing. Also, how much overlap is there between this ticket and CAS-5338 (above)?
  • CAS-5870 - sdplot task interface changes (tsdplot): was tested in casapy-test (r29326). Mostly works; set back to Open for remaining issues. Input requested from tester by developer. Tester: Bunyo
  • CAS-5872 - sdreduce task interface changes (tsdreduce): ARTT in casapy-test (r29326). Tester: Hiroko. Ticket pinged.
  • CAS-5874 - Replace new SD tasks with old ones. RTT, pending a new test package. Ticket with Bunyo.

-- MarkRawlings - 2014-05-29