Date

May 23-28, 2014

Attendees at the Virtual Meeting

• Unknown User (robyn), Kian-Tat Lim, Jacek Becla, Robert Lupton, Andrew Connolly, Gregory Dubois-Felsmann, Unknown User (ciardi), Unknown User (xiuqin), Jeff Kantor, Mario Juric

• Absent: Unknown User (rlambert), Unknown User (mfreemon), Donald Petravick

Goals

• The SAT has recommended that DM-711 and DM-720, the upgrade of selected third party packages, be approved for future use by the DM Release stack.  The TCT will determine if the upgrade will have detrimental impact on either the DM Project cost or the DM Project schedule.

Introduction

The TCT is comprised of:

• Chaired by the DM QA Integration and Test Lead;
  
• Members include the DM Project Manager, DM Deputy Project Managers, DM Institutional Project Managers, DM Project Scientist and Lead Institution Project Scientists/Engineers.

More succinctly, it includes Robyn Allsman,, Jeff Kantor and the complete SAT. The current size dictates a quorum of 7 members responding to a call for discussion and votes. If the quorum isn't met, then the DM PM and the DM PS will decide the result. The quorum will increase as planned positions are filled.

The TCT charter is to:

• Ensure that all deliverables are baselined and once baselined only changed when necessary, according to LSST and DM configuration control processes (see addendum below signature); and
• Verifies that specifications and deliverables are of sufficient maturity and quality, and of acceptable impact to cost and schedule, to be baselined (placed under configuration controlled status).

The TCT is responsible for reviewing and recommending approval or rejection of proposed changes to baselined items to the DM Project Manager and the DM Project Scientist.

Agenda

Following the SAT meeting of 22 May 2014, the TCT had 2 items to review and then vote upon:

• DM-711: Request: Upgrade astrometry.net to release 0.48 
• DM-720: Upgrade various external packages

Preliminary Information

Both of these requests are for upgrades to external packages which had previously been approved for inclusion within the DM Release stack.   A review of the Third Party Software table (https://dev.lsstcorp.org/trac/wiki/DM/ThirdPartySoftware) shows that most are pre-approved for automatic 6 monthly upgrades without additional approval necessary from the TCT. The ones which still need explicit approval are: DM-711: astrometry.net and DM-720: scons (labeled sconsDistrib in table).

The SAT has already assured us, by their vote to submit this to the TCT, that the product upgrades are important to future development of the stack. The updated scons is successfully being used  in the HSC stack. The new astrometry.net software has been integrated with the DM stack and all necessary API changes have been tested successfully.  The products have no upfront cost. The upgrade of the software carries some cost relating to the effort necessary to upgrade the stack and distribution products, and also update affected documentation.  

In my opinion, the cost would not be substantial enough to impact existing schedule or cost. This cost may be characterized by others with more knowledge during our comment period.

Please submit your comments on whether the 2 packages should be approved for upgrade. If and when you are ready to vote, indicate your allow/disallow vote for each item.

I will count the votes on Wednesday May 28. Then I will cajole you one more time until I get a minimum of 7 votes one way or the other. On Friday 30 May,  I will present the case to the DM PM and the DM PS for their consideration.

Virtual Comment Period and Voting

•  K-T 23 May: 
  Oh ho!  I missed the little subscript "u".  So the "auto-uprev" plan was approved, in limited form.  Great!
   I vote to approve recommending both of these.
• Jacek 23 May:
  same here, I vote to approve these two
• Robert 23 May:
  I hereby vote to agree with the SLACers and approve these two proposals.
• Mario 23 May:
  I'll trust the English and vote yes. What could possibly go wrong :)?
• AndrewC 23 May:
  I cant think of any cases when trusting the british led to any problems either.... I vote yes
• GregoryDF 23 May:
• Pending clarification of my membership of the TCT, my votes are perhaps provisional; nevertheless:
  >       • DM-711: Request: Upgrade astrometry.net to release 0.48
  Approve.
  >       • DM-720: Upgrade various external packages
  Approve (including specifically for |scons|), with a request that the documentation on https://dev.lsstcorp.org/trac/wiki/DM/ThirdPartySoftware or any successor page on Confluence include an indication of who has the affirmative responsibility to review the "u"-tagged automatic-upgrade packages on the six-month cycle, select appropriate new versions (presumably that would normally be versions of the "latest stable" or equivalent flavor), and set up the test called for in Ray's original note.  Also, since there's some air between Ray's note and Russell's response, a replacement of those two emails with an explicit policy would be good in any event.
• K-T 23 May:
   I am in the process of writing up a recommendation based on our discussion yesterday that will cover this.  It will go into a new, TCT-only, JIRA issue.
• JeffK 23 May:
  PS my vote is yes on both.
  PPS Since the TCT is advisory to Mario and I, it is probably better protocol (and consistent with overall LSST CCB) if we don’t vote.
• David 28 May:
  I do not have a specific vote but did want to acknowledge receipt and participation.
• Xiuqin 28 May:
  I vote for the upgrades.

Recommendation

The TCT virtual meeting reached a quorum of 10 participants.  The final voting on the issue was  7 in favor of updating the named third party packages and  1 abstention. Three members did not participate in the meeting. Note the PL and PS  abstain from voting whilst the rest of the Team deliberates the proposal's merits.

The TCT recommendation to upgrade the named software was provided to Jeff and Mario for their final determination.

Final Decision

• JeffK 28 May:
  Since the TCT is advisory to Mario and I, we have the final approval.  Since that is the case, we probably should not be voting (though we did this time) nor considered in the counts the future.
  In any case, since Mario and I both voted to approve already, we can consider that final.

Postscript

• Robyn 28 May, postscript to JeffK:
  
  You were not included in the voting counts; you were included in the participation counts.  I'll change the documentation to state that you are non-voting members wrt to the TCT consensus voting.
   That will lower our voting members meeting quorum to 6 (at the moment). And if we don't reach it within a week, then you and Mario will make a unilateral decision at that point.

Action Items

• Kian-Tat Lim provide SAT recommendation for establishing responsibility for, and initiation of, routine review and upgrade of third party software updates.