Role of the Software Coordinator

From David's original message to the GlueX Collaboration mailing list.

David Lawrence davidl at jlab.org
Wed Apr 8 17:23:20 EDT 2009

Hi All,

    As mentioned in my e-mail a few days ago and then discussed during 
the Offline Software meeting today, I will be stepping down from the 
Software Coordinator role for GlueX to focus on other things. As such, 
we will have an election to determine the next person who will serve in 
that role. The plan is for folks to submit nominations to me via e-mail 
for candidates over the next week. Then, on Wednesday April 15, I will 
send out and e-mail naming the nominees. The voting will take place over 
the following week (again, via e-mail) and I will announce the results 
at the next software meeting on April 22.

    It was suggested at the meeting this afternoon that I include a 
description of the duties that the Software Coordinator will need to 
perform so here it is:

1. Overall coordination of the offline software effort. This includes:
    - Watching the repository commits and notifying responsible parties 
when build problems occur.
    - Setting and enforcing software related policies. This may mean 
implementing consensus
      policies or making unilateral decisions in the case of 
unresolvable controversy.
    - Responding to e-mail regarding problems users at large encounter 
with the software
    - Maintaining the Offline software wiki page

2. Maintenance of the subversion repository.
    - Periodically checking out and building the software
    - Creating tagged releases (see 
http://www.jlab.org/Hall-D/software/wiki/index.php/HOWTO_Create_a_Hall-D_Software_Release)
    - Maintaining the hook scripts
    - Maintaining the build system

3. Organizing and chairing the Hall-D Offline Software meetings

4. Reporting periodically to the collaboration the status of the 
software effort
    - Bi-weekly conference calls
    - Collaboration meetings

Eventually, they will presumably also play a role in the maintenance of 
the calibrations and conditions database.

Continued development of the JANA framework will not be among the 
Software Coordinator's responsibilities.

This will take a significant amount of ones time. I'd estimate somewhere 
between 20%-40% integrated over the year. So, please consider who would 
be an appropriate person to take this on. It was suggested that these 
responsibilities could be split among 2 people so that it would not be 
such a burden. I will leave this to be decided on and worked out by the 
nominee(s).

Please send me your nominations by C.O.B. Tuesday, April 14th so that I 
can gather the information to send out on the 15th.

Regards,
-David