Документ взят из кэша поисковой машины. Адрес оригинального документа : http://www.atnf.csiro.au/management/atuc/2005dec/docs/3.6_computing.txt Дата изменения: Mon Nov 28 05:01:24 2005 Дата индексирования: Sun Jun 27 06:37:20 2010 Кодировка:

Report to ATUC, 2005-11-27

Software & Computing
--------------------
* Neil Killeen departed ATNF on 5 Sep 2005 (two years leave of absence).


* ASAP-1.2 was released on 30 November 2005.

Some notable changes are
- support for frequency-switched observations
- building quotients from matched _S/_R pairs or 1*_R/n*_S
automatically
- numerous plotting improvements, including noninteractive plots
- easier customisation, through $HOME/.asap/ configuration directory
and support for user-written plugins
- GUI interface for Mopra users to monitor data quality

We plan to create an asap-users majordomo list, for release
announcements and general discussion. Instructions for joining will
be available on the ASAP home page.


* Miriad support

ATNF elected to reduce support for MIRIAD in the late 1990's, so
that AIPS++ would get new features first and build up its user base.
Hoewever demand for MIRIAD has remained strong, so we are now looking
at how to improve support above the "bugfixes" level.
To us, this means finding resources to write new tasks and add
support for new instruments such as CABB. Over the last few years
this has mainly been done by Bob Sault.

Bob Sault will depart ATNF in the first half of 2006.
Mark Calabretta will become the principal maintainer at ATNF.
Vince McIntyre will continue as assistant maintainer.

With Bob's departure, we are losing significant capacity for adding
new tasks or features to miriad (eg support for CABB). In particular
the finding and fixing of subtle problems relating to data acquisition
problems will require us to find effort from somewhere. We are
canvassing options for this at present.

We are also looking into merging ATNF's code with the CARMA version,
so the maintenance effort can be shared. The amount of work involved
in merging appears reasonable. The benefits to be gained are not
clear-cut however, ie at present we are unsure how much support
CARMA is providing.

More formal time-based releases may be needed because of the extra
coordination required when more than one institution is involved.
Presently, it is done by updating individual tasks and rebuilding
the tar archive. End users can do updates almost automatically.

It may be better to move to a time-based release system with
email notification and a list of changes. The advantages and
disadvantages of this are being considered now.

A 'bleeding edge' version would be available too, possibly via
the existing 'mirimport' update mechanism.

Work is going on now to get miriad working on 64-bit Intel-like
architectures (IA64, AMD64/EMT64) in the ATNF version. This should
help users needing to create images larger than 2Gbyte.

No work is going on to add 24-bit support to XMTV. We don't have
available the expert effort this task will need.

A public bug tracker will be available in January or February.
This will enable users to review the status of bug reports and
add their own. This will complement, not replace, the 'mirbug'
mechanism. The at_bugs page
http://www.atnf.csiro.au/computing/at_bugs.html
will also remain.

Question for atuc: is a miriad-users majordomo list useful?


* Public Workstations

we may need to delay upgrading a few months, owing to budgetary
restrictions.



* Computer support

CSIRO IT is moving most of its staff off-site, to the Delhi Rd location.
Fortunately, the Business Support staff (Tony Ambaum, Helen Stibbs) will
continue to be based at Marsfield. Hristo Nikolov left in October 2005.

We are working with CSIRO IT on a service level agreement, but progress
has been slow.

A significant problem with their service delivery model is that it can
take hours to get responses to simple requests, because of the number
of hands the requests pass through before getting to the person who will
actually do something.
We hope to get agreement that ATNF visitors can approach CSIRO IT staff
directly for assistance with minor matters (e.g. password resets).

Question for atuc: would a "fault reporting" system for the Marsfield
site, similar to that at the observatories, be useful to have?