CASA User Testing Meeting Minutes - 2014-12-02, 09:00 Socorro / 11:00 Charlottesville

Agenda

Participants

Locations

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

Minutes (Main Points Only)

Status

• 4.3 release branch has been created. Linux "new style" test and stable packages have been updated recently. All remaining 4.3 work should be bugfixes only. OS X packaging is currently being worked on. A pre-release package is available, and all 4.3 bugfix testing should be done on this whenever practical.
• 4.2.2 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.
  • Descriptions of the new-style packages, how to start them, etc. are summarized on the following wiki pages:
    • https://safe.nrao.edu/wiki/bin/view/Software/CASA/StartCasa#Redux
    • https://safe.nrao.edu/wiki/bin/view/Software/CasaVersionNumbering#Redux
    • Version number/Subversion revision number look-up table: https://svn.cv.nrao.edu/cgi-bin/casa-version-series
    • The new-style packages are available on four machines in Charlottesville (zuul01 - 04). These are configured to allow local testing of the new-style stable package prior to the above roll-out. zuul01, 03 and 04 are running RHEL6, zuul02 is running RHEL5. REMEMBER: Use /usr/bin/casa on these machines to make sure that you are running the new test/stable packages. The new-style packages in Socorro have been rolled out (4.2.25 was the 4.3 branch point). Anticipated deployment on Charlottesville (and other) clusters after public release.

Agenda

• Multipanel/multiplot testing for PlotMS? Some testing effectively conducted during the recent workshop, Juergen will test this (at least under Linux), Amanda wrote up the testing she recently conducted as part of the data reduction process; items identified as issues under Linux may also be need to be checked under OS X by the Data Analysts.
• Viewer and PlotMS testing - DAs
  • CAS-6604 - Viewer parent for all platforms, was for 4.2.2 pre-releases, now for 4.3. Some subtasks remain Open. Mark R. suspects that some of these may need to be pushed back to 4.4?
  • See also: CAS-7038 (all subtasks currently resolved) and CAS-7039 (two open subtasks) - OS X-specific 4.3 PlotMS and Viewer issues
• New ticket assignments (see below). Only 4.3 will be focused on for this meeting.
• The "nag list", "input required" items
• Other unresolved 4.3 blockers. As of now, these appear to be:
  • CAS-7175 CAS-7175: importasdm problem on RHEL6
  • CAS-7176 CAS-7176: applycal with applymode='calflagstrict' is very slow in 4.3
• Other testing items specifically raised?
  • TBA

New Testing Assignments (see relevant section below)

• Assignment of any other "To Be Assigned" Items.
• The next meeting is scheduled to take place on December 16th.
• Any Other Business: None.

Old Action Items

• TBA

New Action Items Arising

• TBA

PART 1: Items to be Covered During Meetings (as time permits)

Propose to Close Items

• TBA

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

• CAS-3580 (Aug): 4.3 item. Prediction of expected image based noise based on Tsys. Under Test in 4.3. Tester: Eric V. (to be tested at the JAO). Kept open at Remy's express request. Recent testing continuing by Eric.
• CAS-5836 (Nov): 4.3 item. Create new task imrebin. Under Test again in 4.4.9 or later (so testable again now). Tester: Adam. The dropdeg and box parameters should be hooked up correctly now. Close to done? Ticket pinged. May need to reassign to another tester?
• CAS-4047 (Oct): applycal does not tell you how its interpolating in frequency & handling of multiple calibration tables and both frequency and time interpolation ambiguous. Under Test in 4.3. Will probably end up being tested on the 4.3 release branch. Tester: Amanda. Looks pretty good. Some suggestions (mostly docs). Passed back to the developer for final documentation tweaking, but can then be resolved. Ticket pinged. Ticket pinged again.
• CAS-5191 (Mar): Add gain threshold parameter to fluxscale. Under Test (r28480) in any recent package. Tester: Arielle (was Crystal). Some testing done, bug fix put in, more testing still to be done.
• CAS-6835 (Sep): Make a wrapper of cvel to use the MSTransform framework Under Test (r31057+) in current (new-style) stable. Tester: Juergen. This seems to work overall. There were some differences seen occasionally in results for a few cases (use of Barycentric coordinates, cubic interpolation)., but it is not yet known whether the new or old results are the right ones. Emmanuel has also recently tested this, and reported some odd cvel2 behavior. Testing ongoing.
• CAS-4758 (Sep): fluxscale fails if one of the reference fields is flagged. Under Test (r31121+) in current (new-style) stable. Tester: Claire. No testing progress for over a month. Ticket pinged.
• CAS-6529: MS processed with mstransform not handled correctly by uvcontsub, clean, etc... Under Test in latest new-style stables and pre-releases. Tester: Kristina. Mostly works now. One more fix just committed (r31369 in trunk, also now in release branch). Ticket pinged.
• CAS-6729 (Sep): Update ATM library in CASA 4.3. ARTT in 4.3. Tester: Todd. Ticket pinged.
• CAS-6919 (Sep): A timesforintent method would be useful in msmd. Under Test (r31083+) in current (new-style) stable. Tester: Todd (was Nathan). Ticket pinged.
• CAS-6912: makemask copy always replaces image. 4.3 item. "Under Test" again in stable package 4.4.9+. Tester: Juergen. Ongoing. Just needs to be checked again. Close to done?
• CAS-6951 (Oct): mstransform creates a 4-polarization DATA column for single-polarization ALMA WVR data, and a 1-polarization DATA column for four-polarization ALMA data. Fix already included in current new-style test/stable packages newer than 4.2.23. Under Test. Tester: Todd. Ticket pinged.
• CAS-6962 (Oct): wvrgcal segfaults on a 9-antenna dataset in which only one antenna has a WVR, and minnumants=2. Under Test. Tester: Todd. Ticket pinged.
• CAS-6984 (Oct): wvrgcal cannot accept the following tie parameter: tie=['J0004-4736,J235538-451325']. Under Test. 4.3 item. Fix committed. Tester: Todd. Ticket pinged.
• CAS-5845: sdcal/sdcal2 need improvements to documentation. Under Test for 4.3. Draft text posted to Jira ticket, just needs approval. Tester: Crystal. Ticket pinged.
• CAS-4623 (Aug): SetJy: Method to set Pol Fraction and Angle as Function of Frequency. Under Test in current packages. Tester: Preshanth. Had been pending access to new testable package. Steve now has a test dataset for this. Ticket passed to Preshanth, although Steve will probably also do a bit of testing of this one. Ticket pinged.

Other Items Currently "Under Test"

• CAS-3666: split on spws gives errors for different correlation shapes. Former 4.3 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. Under Test in 4.3. Tester: Passed to Steve for reassignment someone in Socorro instead. New split roll-out deferred to 4.3 (see split2 tickets elsewhere on this page). See also above meeting notes on CAS-5785. Sandra's functional tests are already part of the automated testing suite. We will do the following: If Steve spots a new suitable test dataset, he will check this with that, but if not, we will proceed under the assumption for 4.3 that the automated testing at this point is sufficient. In other words, a lack of additional user testing of this item should not prevent a 4.3 release.
• CAS-7031 (Nov): plotms export dialog box should have a button to "insert name of measurement set". Bug fix: trunk - r31698; release 4.3 - r31699. Tester: DA (TBD)

• CAS-6707 (Sep): mstransform problems with CALDEVICE and SYSPOWER sub-tables when creating an MMS. Under Test in 4.3, but 4.4 item now. Tester: Previously passed to Steve for VLA user tester assignment. Previously discussed at length: Dependent on the level of parallelization expected for 4.3. Testing will probably not be practical until 4.4.
• CAS-5893 (May): Now a 4.4 item. add the ability to write a spectral profile to an ASCII file in the ia tool. Was Under Test in 4.3. Commit was r29681. Tester: Assigned to Juergen for testing and a possible CSSC discussion. Pushed back to 4.4. Might also need a task adding for this for 4.4?

"Ready To Test" Items Pending Tester Assignment

• CAS-7148 (Nov) plotms: inconsistent handling of the destination directory of the plotfile. Tester; TBD (DA?)
• 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. Ready To Test. Crystal had been a tester for this.

Single Dish (to be skipped during the meeting)

• See SD ticket list below

Input Required

4.3

• CAS-7132: split/mstransform should optionally adapt the relevant subtables when antennas are split out. Awaiting input from Crystal(?). Lots of discussion on how best to handle of the ANTENNA table.

4.4+

• CAS-7170 (Nov): imsmooth leaving a small frequency trend when convolving to single beam. Input required from Nathan.
• CAS-2882: plotms does not display flags correctly. 4.4 item. May already have been fixed, though? Ticket with George, needs verification from Dirk.
• CAS-5878: Provide a way to obtain pointing direction of an antenna corresponding to MS rows. 4.4 item. Ticket with Kana.
• CAS-5597: CRTF doco improvements. Input Required. Discussion ongoing between Juergen and developer. 4.4 item. Decision needed from Juergen.
• CAS-6790: Plotms hangs when trying to change number of plots in display. *Input Required" from Paul.
• CAS-6975: not evidently possible to overplot from casapy. Input Required from Remy.
• CAS-7082 (Nov): ia.convolve2d gives unusual SEVERE message when asked to convolve to the same resolution. Input Required. Passed to Juergen for CSSC input.
• CAS-5334 (Feb): Ellipse regions have wrong width (RA). Second fix committed. Was previously tested in casapy-test (r29326), set to Input Required for input from developer. Tester: Paul. Pushed back to 4.4.
• CAS-6823 Memory consumption in wvrgcal seems large. Ticket with Lindsey. 4.4+ at this point.
• CAS-5785 (May 2014): drastic split speed discrepancies depending on whether spw is set or not. Input Required. Ticket back with reporter for more info. Known behavior for MSSelection. Some discussion of this item and related topics: split with spw (see also CAS-3666 below). It would be good to be able to select by spw on a large dataset. Will MSTransform have the same problem? Do MMSs help here? Also, Justo's note on this implies that this is a known issue with MSSelection (and not a split problem), but doesn't actually indicate if this is a known issue to be addressed or a known issue that we have to document and just live with. (Steve would also like to be able to do spw selection in asdm2ms - there may well be a separate ticket for this). 4.4+ item.
• CAS-3116 (Jun): Comprehensive computation of spectral index from image(s). Long history of testing this for the VLA. ALMA was holding off on testing this for now, pending the VLA testing. Some testing done, problems still found. Had been bumped to 4.3, now pushed back to 4.4. 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. Set to Input required for comments from Steve, since it sounds like the tester and developer are at a bit of an impasse.
• CAS-4735 (Nov): imsmooth needs additional option for single dish use. Subtask of CAS-5844 (above). Open again. Tester: Tsuyoshi. Critical item. Code committed to trunk. 4.3 item. Some testing done, mostly works as intended. Input Required from Crystal for some remaining changes. Any remaining future work will have to be for 4.4+.
• 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... Version 4.4+.
• CAS-6124: imfit subtasks:
  • CAS-4538: migrate imfit input estimates from file to input parameters. Input Required (was "On Hold"). Subtask of CAS-6124. Ticket passed to Juergen, pending a CSSC discussion of what needs to be done and a scheduling of the work. Pushed back to 4.4.
  • CAS-6234: imfit estimates should allow sky coordinates in addition to pixel values. Input Required (was "On Hold"). Subtask of CAS-6124. Ticket with Juergen, pending a CSSC discussion of what needs to be done and a scheduling of the work. Pushed back to 4.4.
• CAS-5996: immath unit- (and if relevant beam-) awareness. Input Required. Ticket with Juergen, pending a CSSC discussion of what needs to be done. Pushed back to 4.4.
• CAS-5488: include beam size in header of SD image. Input Required. Ticket with Cat. EOC will provide input. Pushed back to 4.4.
• CAS-4748 (Dec 2012): Polarization selection does not select SIGMA. Input Required. Passed to Jeff for prioritization. Version 4.4+.
• CAS-5833 (Nov 2013): Enhanced Support for Flagging based on CalTable. Ticket stalled due to lack of requirements; passed to Jeff a long while ago. Version 4.4+.
• CAS-5886 (Dec 2013): bizarre clean boxes for large images. Awaiting input from one developer to another. Version 4.4+.
• CAS-6175 Plotms-vis-model (minus) normalization (visnorm) in gain,bandpass (seems to be missing now). Ticket with Rob for follow-up. Pushed back to 4.4. Ticket pinged.
• CAS-3614 Calibration and Analysis of Single Dish Polarization. Pushed back to 4.4+. Input from Tsuyoshi requested.
• CAS-4349 Amplitude calibration for single dish. Pushed back to 4.4+. Input from Tsuyoshi requested.
• CAS-2825 Support for Lissajous mapping. Pushed back to 4.4+. Input from Tsuyoshi requested. Discussion ongoing.

Other Blockers

• CAS-7175 importasdm problem on RHEL6. Open. 4.3 Blocker. Ticket with Michel. Fix committed to trunk, Dirk to commit fix to release branch.
• CAS-7176 applycal with applymode='calflagstrict' is very slow in 4.3. 4.3 Blocker. Scheduled. Ticket with George.

• CAS-6688 Turn on new vi/vb within imager and test. 4.4 item. Currently with Jim.

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

Unable to Test Items

4.3

• CAS-6947 Cannot export asdm with (many?) solar system objects. Input Required. Believed to be fixed for 4.3, but needs a suitable ephemeris ASDM dataset to confirm.

4.3(?)

• CAS-6220 (Mar): Enable importasdm to read flags from the binary ASDM data. Under Test in any of the new-style stable packages. Commit was r28609. Ticket with Dirk for now. Todd had incidentally tested this while working on something else. Runs to completion (and sometimes generates a lot of INFO messages). Close to done, but kept open for now for second stage implementation of asdm2MS completion. Ongoing.
• CAS-2988 (May): Make importasdm and MeasTable work with the JPL Horizon ephemerides for solar system objects via the "COMET" mechanism of Measures. Currently Under Test in 4.3. Testing so far has shown the issue is with data capturer. Close to done - just awaiting a suitable Ephemeris dataset for a final test. Tester: Dirk.
• 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. To be left on hold, pending the refactored imager classes.

4.4+

• CAS-6433 (Apr): Implement a function to derive Jy/K factor from amplitude calibrator observation. Open. Currently with developer. Was targeted for November 23rd Pipeline release. Pushed back to March 2015 Pipeline release.
• CAS-6232 (Mar): writing version numbers in GUIs. Under Test in 4.3. Most recent commit to trunk was r29373. Tester: Juergen. However, this also needs to be checked in the table browser, the work on which is currently unscheduled. Spawned another ticket for its underlying cause.
• CAS-5844(Dec 2013): 4.3 imsmooth specification and testing targets. Container ticket only - see its subtasks (including CAS-4735 which is "ARTT"). Currently "Open" and assigned to developer. To be resolved when all subtasks are done (one of which is now a 4.4 item...).
• 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. 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. Pushed back to 4.4 (at the earliest).
• CAS-4636 (Oct 2012): Elevation dependent opacity application w/ Tsys. Still awaiting input from Science. Had been "On Hold" since August, awaiting data. Switched to Input Required and passed to Crystal for comment. Bumped back to 4.4+. Work on this is "Unscheduled" until further notice.
• CAS-5806 Mathematical prediction of post-gridding single dish beam. Formerly a 4.3+ Blocker, now "Critical". Developer has done some modelling, but... ? This is a "blocker of a different kind..." High priority (blocking further development). Currently Open. Crystal and Kumar had been in discussion, but this ticket has been quiet since (effectively) December. Effectively a 4.4+ item now.
• CAS-6243: sdimaging does not accept type numpy.string_ for fieldid. Unscheduled, pending identification of a suitable example case. Commit was r29988. Discussion ongoing. Pushed back to 4.4(+). Tester: Todd.
• 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. Unscheduled now, pending availability of a 10.8 Mac for the developer. Tester: Nathan

Upcoming Ready to (Re)Test Items

Not Yet Assigned To Testers

• TBA

Single Dish

Already Assigned To Testers

• CAS-6778 (Sep): Add support for new 'OBJECT' reference framew in mstransform. Was previously "Under Test". Tester: Arielle. Some testing done. Sounds mostly good, but some issues raised - ticket reopened and passed back to developer for more work. Ongoing. Awaiting developer response. Reported issue more a cvel issue?
• CAS-3532 (Sep): Incorporation of Alma Primary Beam in Mosaic. Was ARTT. Tester was Scott S., but ticket passed to Crystal for input. Some test imaging done. Current status is Scheduled. Pushed back to 4.4.
• CAS-5731 (Oct): Loading DS9 region files into the viewer produces a warning and does not load. Open; Was 4.3 item, pushed back to 4.4. Ticket back with developer. Tester: Jen.
• 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 4.4 in Jira. Pushed back to 4.4.
• CAS-4663 (Oct 2012): specfit components/prompt/inf. Unscheduled (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 Scheduled. 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 to restart work on this under Linux soon.

Single Dish

• CAS-7013: Remove old single dish tasks from CASA 4.4. Under Test in 4.4. Tester TBD. Passed to Bunyo.
• CAS-6702: Provide a way to select data by scan row in raster mapping. Was Under Test in recent new-style test/stable package, but omitted from release branch will now be included in 4.4 instead. Tester: Tsuyoshi.
• CAS-4362: Automatic resolution of cell size causes unexpected expansion of grid area in sdgrid (STGrid). CASA 4.4. Under Test in 4.4. Tester TBD. Passed to Bunyo.
• CAS-6703 (Aug): Provide a way to select data by raster (visit) in raster mapping. Under Test in 4.3. Ticket with Bunyo.
• CAS-6704 (Sep): Enable plotting data by raster scan row and raster visit. 4.3 item. Under Test in 4.3, pending availability of new user-testable packages in Chile. Commit was r31160. Tester: Tsuyoshi. Testing has started on this, mostly OK, but an exception triggered. Known issue item for 4.3, A fix is in for 4.4.
• CAS-6587 (Oct): proper flagging information handling in sdfit. Subtask of CAS-1756. Currently Under Test in new-style stable; 4.3 item. Tester: Bunyo. Real issue identified, testing ongoing. Ticket pinged.
• CAS-5139 (Sep): Proper handling of flag information in sideband separation algorithm. Low priority item. Subtask of CAS-1756. Currently Under Test; Moved to 4.3. Tester: Bunyo. Testing stalled? Ticket pinged.
• CAS-6564 (Jul): sdplot: improper tick interval in plottype='azel'. Under Test in 4.3 casapy-test/new-style stable package. Tester: Patricio. Close to done now, and testable in the current stable. Ticket pinged.
• CAS-6572: (Aug): A new baseline task that handles baseline table. Under Test in latest 4.3 casapy-test/new-style stable packages. Mostly done. Ticket with Kana.
• CAS-6168: enable plotter2 to change viewport size. Under Test (ASAP r2895) in casapy-test (r29326). Ticket with Takeshi. This was to be tested after the 4.2.2 release. Ticket pinged again.