[Users] Meeting minutes for 2020-02-27

[Steven R. Brandt]

Date: 2/27/2020
Chair: Ian
Minutes: Roland/Steve
Present: Roland, Steven, Peter, Liu, Ian, Bill, Zach, Maria, Yosef

updates on codes:
* Roland reminded reviewees to have their codes included in master
* had a discussion about whether it is worthwhile to delay releases if
   codes are not ready
* differing opinions on how much to strive for a 6 month release cycle
* requirement to go into master at this point is that including it must
   not fail
* presync: Steve should be able to get into master until Mar 1st
* delay self-force code: likely delay until next release
* simfactory python3: all clusters still offer python2, is default on
   most of them. May not want to do the hard switch. For simfactory3 the
   "sim" tool is python2 and has a rudimentary parser of the mdb and
   then looks for python3 (see
   https://bitbucket.org/ianhinder/simfactory3/src/master/runpython).
   Current python3 port of simfactory may be a bit more unstable due to
   python3's changed string handling. Solution is to check that the
   machine has locale set properly. Likely delay by one release.

timeline of ET release
* 
https://docs.einsteintoolkit.org/et-docs/Release_Details#Schedule_for_ET_2020_04
* timeline is not objected by anyone on the call, including March 1 
cutoff for getting things into master
* links on agenda wiki page: 
https://docs.einsteintoolkit.org/et-docs/Meeting_agenda are for ease use
* Roland will not automatically approve tickets without review between 
now and the release.

websites related to ET:
* cactuscode.org: DNS entry needs to be updated, Ian and Steve are in
   contact with LSU support
* no progress yet in conversion of cactuscode.org content to markdown /
   away from PHP

SPEC CPU v8 benchmark
* https://www.spec.org/cpuv8
* https://www.spec.org/cpu2017/Docs/benchmarks/507.cactuBSSN_r.html
* Cactus (ML_BSSN) is in SPEC2017 and should be updated
* would want current version to be included
* Jian Tao has started the process, Erik has weighed in pointing out
   the newer version of ML_BSSN
* need a volunteer to work on including it, tentative agreement by Steve
* would like to get previous submission

Unanswered questions:
* Roland will add some (crude) blacklisting facility to remember
   answered questions
* Steve handled Bilal's hello world
* Issue of compilation of ETK on Ubuntu 18.04 (Federico Cipolletta): was 
resolved in private conversation.