CASA User Testing Meeting Minutes - 2015-02-03, 09:00 Socorro / 11:00 Charlottesville

Post-meeting minutes notes appended in blue text.

Agenda

Participants

Present: Mark R., Anand, Juergen

Apologies: Crystal (ALMA polarization meeting), Arielle (DRM)

Locations

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

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


Minutes (Main Points Only)

Status

  • 4.4 is currently under development. Test/stable/monthly packages are being produced for RHEL5 and 6. OS X package production is currently a work in progress.
  • 4.3.0 has been released for RHEL 5 and 6, and OS X 10.8.
  • 4.3.0 is the current public release version for both Linux and OS X. 4.2.2 is still currently being used for pipelined data reduction at the NAASC.
    • 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 test machines in Charlottesville (zuul01 - 04). These are configured to allow local testing of the new-style 4.4 stable packages. 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). Deployment on Charlottesville (and other) clusters is a work in progress, as cluster infrastructure issues are addressed. See the recent circulars from Mike Hatz for more information on this. Possible annoyance with CASA 4.2.2 on new CVPOST cluster node image just reported? Crystal to e-mail Mark R. about this.

Number of CASA Jira tickets with "Ready To Test"/"Under Test" status (including EA, EU, JAO, Software-only tickets, but excluding Pipeline) prior to meeting: 46 (was 48).

Number of CASA Jira tickets with "Ready To Test"/"Under Test" status (including EA, EU, JAO, Software-only tickets) following meeting: 46.

Agenda

  • Viewer and PlotMS testing - DAs
    • CAS-6604 - Viewer parent for all platforms, updated for lingering post-4.3 release issues. Some subtasks remain Open.
    • See also: CAS-7039 (two open/unscheduled subtasks) - OS X-specific post-4.3 release Viewer issues
  • New ticket assignments (see below).
  • The "nag list", "input required" items
  • Recent discussion items:
    • Crystal had previously noted that she had encountered a problem when taking a data set from CASA to FITS and back to CASA again: problems are reported with axes coordinates when (e.g.) attempting to use impbcorr. A Jira ticket will be created for this, but she also wanted to know how to best draw attention to tickets that have a broad, significant impact on the user experience but which cannot be classified as blockers. Ticket number?
    • Juergen was going to review the "Input required" tickets that are listed as needing CSSC input, and decide how to proceed with them.
  • Other testing items specifically raised?
    • Mark will sound out Josh Malone about NRAO plans for moving to OS X 10.10 (and/or 10.9).

New Testing Assignments (see relevant section below)

  • Assignment of any other "To Be Assigned" Items.
  • The next meeting is scheduled to take place on February 17th.
  • Any Other Business: None.

Old Action Items

  • None

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-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. Additional clarification of testing details has been provided on the ticket by developers. Tester: Crystal
  • CAS-3580 (Aug): 4.4 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. Ticket pinged previously.
  • 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. Passed to developer for comment - he will get back to the ticket in the next week or so.
  • CAS-4758 (Sep): 4.4 item. fluxscale fails if one of the reference fields is flagged. Under Test (r31121+) in current (new-style) stable. Tester: Claire. No testing progress on this since October. If no additional progress is made in the next two weeks, this will be reassigned to Juergen.
  • CAS-6912: 4.4 item now. 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 (but went out in the 4.3 release already). Close to done? Testing ongoing.
  • CAS-4623 (Aug): 4.4 item now. 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: Preshanth has tested this, and promised to file his report. Ticket pinged.
  • CAS-7221: 4.4 item (just missed 4.3 release). importfits doesn't support RESTWAV fits keyword. Under Test in current stable. Tester: Remy. Close to done? Ticket pinged.
  • 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 available. Ongoing item.

Other Items Currently "Under Test"

  • CAS-6778 (Sep): Add support for new 'OBJECT' reference framew in mstransform. "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. Developer has replied to the tester's comments, response requested.
  • CAS-6527 CASA collides with easy_install.pth. 4.4 Blocker%ENDCOLOR item. Under Test. Tester: Remy.
  • CAS-5836 (Nov): 4.4 item. Create new task imrebin. Under Test again in 4.4.9 or later (so testable again now). Tester: Amanda (was Adam). The dropdeg and box parameters should be hooked up correctly now. Close to done?
  • CAS-6529: 4.4 item now. MS processed with mstransform not handled correctly by uvcontsub, clean, etc... Under Test in latest new-style stables and pre-releases. Tester: TBD (was Kristina). Mostly works now. One more fix just committed (r31369 in trunk, also now in release branch). Reassigned to Juergen, who will get up to speed on this ticket and keep/reassign as appropriate.
  • CAS-6835 (Sep): 4.4 item. Make a wrapper of cvel to use the MSTransform framework Under Test (r31057+) in current (new-style) stable. Tester: Emmanuel (maybe with input from Juergen). This seems to work overall. Some ongoing discussion on what should be supported between Justo and Emmanuel.

"Ready To Test" Items Pending Tester Assignment

  • CAS-7298 (Jan): 4.4 item. SETJY sets several edge channels to zero value in CASA4.3. Ready To Test in recent test pacakge. Tester: Emmanuel Tested and resolved following the meeting. May be needed as a 4.3 patch? TBD.
  • CAS-6602 (Jan): 4.4 item. ia.toworld() does not return correct value for concatenated image with tabular axis. Ready To Test now (probably in the 4.3 release). Tester: DA (Under the assumption that the developer can recommend a suitable test dataset).
  • CAS-3571 (Jan): Ionospheric Correction (TECOR). Ready To Test now (probably in the 4.3 release). Tester: Ticket left with George, so that he can liaise with testers Jason Kooi, Chris Hales and Huib Intema.
  • CAS-6938 (Jan): plotms needs a coloraxis='intent' option. Ready To Test. Tester: DA

  • CAS-7258 (Jan): 4.4 item. concat should also scale SIGMA when it scales WEIGHT. Probably available in stable now. Clarification still needed on the necessary testing procedure was requested from Dirk. Tester: Dirk (or his EU designate).

Single Dish (to be skipped during the meeting)

  • See SD ticket list below

Input Required

  • CAS-5806 Mathematical prediction of post-gridding single dish beam. Formerly a 4.3+ Blocker, now "Critical". "Input Required?* Developer has done some modelling, but... ? This is a "blocker of a different kind..." High priority (blocking further development). Currently Input Required from Kana. Crystal and Kumar had been in discussion, but this ticket has been quiet since (effectively) December. 4.4+ item now. Not sure what to do with this one?
  • CAS-6975: not evidently possible to overplot from casapy. Input Required from Remy. Ticket pinged.
  • CAS-5334 (Feb 2014): 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. Cropped up in a Helpdesk ticket recently, so still a problem.
  • CAS-7282 (Feb 2015): add Gauribidanur Radio Heliograph to CASA. New item, low priority. Ticket with developer, but more input needed from user first.
  • CAS-6823 Memory consumption in wvrgcal seems large. Ticket with Lindsey. 4.4+ at this point. Ticket pinged repeatedly.Provisionally resolved as fixed following the meeting.
  • 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. Ticket pinged repeatedly without a response from the reporter.
  • 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+. Ticket pinged.
  • 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. Ticket pinged.More thought about imfit still needed by Science.
    • 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. Ticket pinged.More thought about imfit still needed by Science.
  • 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.Input provided. Passed back to dev and set back to "Scheduled".
  • 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. Ticket history is a bit muddled - Passed to Joe for clarification on whether the requested change was approved or rejected by Juergen et al.CSSC input provided. Ticket set back to "Scheduled" and passed back to developer.
  • CAS-4748 (Dec 2012): Polarization selection does not select SIGMA. Input Required. Passed to Jeff for prioritization. Version 4.4+. Ticket pinged previously.
  • 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 previously.
  • CAS-3614 Calibration and Analysis of Single Dish Polarization. Pushed back to 4.4+. Input from Tsuyoshi requested: Response was that cal/analysis strategy for SD pol not yet established, so no input possible yet. Leaving as "Input Required" until then.
  • CAS-4349 Amplitude calibration for single dish. Pushed back to 4.4+. Input from Tsuyoshi requested. Ticket pinged previously.
  • CAS-2825 Support for Lissajous mapping. Pushed back to 4.4+. Input from Tsuyoshi requested. Discussion ongoing.
  • 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+.

Other Blockers

  • CAS-7289 plotms should support selecting the plot of FLOAT_DATA. Scheduled. Currently with Pam. Work ongoing.
  • CAS-6688 Turn on new vi/vb within imager and test. 4.4 item. Unscheduled. Currently with Jim. Ticket pinged previously.
  • CAS-7251 sdimaging crashed on 4.3 prerelease for OS X 10.8. 4.4 item. Open. Currently with Kana. Takeshi had been looking into this. Crash reproduced at NAOJ, but not yet in CV.
  • CAS-7224 Migrate aatm code to casa code tree. 4.4 item. Scheduled. Currently with Kana. Pinged Kana in case there's someone in particular who needs to be nudged for a comment on this.Provisional plan proposed for moving forward with this.
  • CAS-7220 Update ATM library in CASA 4.4. 4.4 item. Scheduled. Currently with Kana. Clarification requested for the benefit of the ticket.


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

  • CAS-6989 (Jan): 4.4 item. Define infrastructure for new sdutil, sd tool and classes. RTT. Currently awaiting a feature merge back to trunk and general libsakura availability.
  • CAS-7240 (Jan): 4.4 item. Dot option for grid lines in plotms does not work on Mac. RTT, pending a suitable OS X test/stable 4.4 package. Tester DA
  • CAS-7247 (Jan): 4.4 item. peak value in spectral profile Gaussian estimates window overlapping with slider on Mac. RTT, pending a suitable OS X test/stable 4.4 package. Tester: DA
  • 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 was kept open for second stage implementation of asdm2MS completion. May be able to close?
  • 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.
  • 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 and flagged as a Pipeline Blocker.
  • 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 CAS-7033) 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 "Input Required"). Currently "Open" and assigned to developer. To be resolved when all subtasks are done.
  • 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 some indefinite future release.
  • 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-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. Just checked back on this ticket for a status update.
  • 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. Scheduled again now. Also sen under OS X 10.8+. Ticket with the developer. Tester: Nathan.

Upcoming Ready to (Re)Test Items

Not Yet Assigned To Testers

  • TBA

Single Dish

See below "assigned" SD list.

Already Assigned To Testers

  • 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? Recent testing done, passed back to dev.
  • CAS-7185 (Dec): 4.4 item. reset rest frequency in viewer to original value. Available in stable now. Tester: Nathan. Some testing done and it mostly works, but a few issues identified. Passed back to developer for comment on feedback.
  • CAS-6951 (Oct): 4.4 item now. 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. Scheduled again now. Tester: Todd. Ticket currently back with developer again.
  • CAS-6962 (Oct): 4.4 item now. wvrgcal segfaults on a 9-antenna dataset in which only one antenna has a WVR, and minnumants=2. Scheduled again. Tester: Todd. No longer crashes, but odd behavior remains for zero-value case. Ticket currently back with developer. Ticket pinged.
  • CAS-3532 (Sep): Incorporation of Alma Primary Beam in Mosaic. Was ARTT, currently Scheduled. 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. Unlikely for 4.4 now?
  • 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. Previously identified as a duplicate of CAS-5617, but now (also) a sub-task of it.
  • 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-6702: Provide a way to select data by scan row in raster mapping. Ready To Test. Tester: Tsuyoshi. Needs CASA 4.4.78 or later in Chile - blocked for now.Testing started on local tarball installation in the meantime.
  • CAS-7238 (Jan): Provide a way to suppress huge logs in sdscale. Under Test. Passed to Bunyo.
  • CAS-6992 (Jan): MS transition: Define a task to generate Tsys calibration table. Under Test. Passed to Bunyo.
  • CAS-6987 (Jan): Imaging of multi-beam data taken by Nobeyama 45-m. Ready To Test (pending a suitable test/stable package). Passed to Bunyo, to liaise with the identified external tester.
  • 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. Ticket pinged previously.
  • CAS-6703 (Aug): Provide a way to select data by raster (visit) in raster mapping. Under Test in 4.3. Tester: Patricio. Testing ongoing (but it sounds close to done?). Needs CASA 4.4.78 or later.
  • 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-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. Ticket pinged previously.

-- MarkRawlings - 2015-01-30

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Topic revision: 2015-02-03, MarkRawlings
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