XRootD Collaboration Meeting held at CERN 24-October-2012
Attendees: * Dirk Duellmann (CERN) * Gerardo Ganis (CERN) * Andrew Hanushevsky (SLAC) * Lukasz Janyst (CERN) * Danila Oleynik (JINR) * Andreas Peters (CERN) * Justin Salmon (CERN)
Discussion Topics
Releases
We are now 3.2.5 next 3.2.6 rc-1 patch release is schedule for Wednesday, October 31st. All patch submitters must supply their list of patches that should be included in 3.2.6 prior to this time. There is still one outstanding patch (Certificate Cache Serialization) that is still in testing but should be available prior to this date. Fortunately, all of them for this cycle were at this meeting.
Relative to the root release, root 5.34.02 (currently out) and subsequent patch releases will still use the old client. Root 6.0.0 candidate release will be out 10/30 with a production release scheduled for 12/2. This happily coincides with the XRootD 3.3.0 release schedule.
Next minor release
The next minor release will be 3.3.0. There are approximately 700 patches outstanding for this release (about 450 related to the new client). The release candidate, 3.3.0-rc1 is scheduled for Friday, November 2nd. The new client will be available as code in development in this release. Generally, everything that is in git head will be in this release. Production release is scheduled for December 2nd.
The three most significant user changes in 3.3.0 are:
- xrdcpy will be renamed to xrdcp with xrdcp becoming xrdcpold. The new xrdcp adopts the backwards compatible but a more user-friendly command line interface that is used by all subsequent versions of xrdcp.
- Third-party copy support as the new xrdcp interface includes that.
- The XRootD protocol will be available as a plug-in shared library that can be used by xproofd allowing the root team to retire the rootd daemon.
Next major release
The next major release, 4.0.0 is scheduled for the first part of March, 2013. It will minimally include:
- Full production version of the new client,
- xrdcopy (new client) will replace xrdcp
- XrdPosix will use the new client (this means that the proxy server and FUSE will use the new client)
- IPV6 (will require plug-in writers to recompile their code)
- The readv pass-through enhancement supplied by CMS
Some significant user changes are:
- The xrdfs command replaces the xrd command to provide full access to XRootD features using the new client. The new interface is much more user-friendly.
- The new client-based xrdcopy replaces xrdcp but the interface does not change,
- While the new client can co-exist with the old client, the new client will become the default for the root plug-in. However, the old client can be selected by either an envar setting or a root.rc directive.
- The two year support life-time clock for the old client starts ticking.
EPEL conformance
Generally, all EPEL related concerns have been addressed for DPM, ROOT, EOS, and CMS. We now have a list of publicly supported API and a support statement on how those API will be treated across releases. This has been tentatively approved by EPEL This, we can be in compliance starting at release 3.3.0.
Action Item: LJ will touch bases with Doug Strain (OSG) on 3.3.0 for EPEL compliance and keep in touch with Mattias Ellert (the EPEL coordinator) to make sure we are on track.
The git repository
The new client is in github. However, the repositories will be merged for 3.3.0 but ABI compatibility will not be guaranteed for the new client until 4.0.0. The collaboration expressed passive interest (most neutral and 3 positive) to moving the repository to github. The positives are that better tools are available in github and that the project will receive more visibility. The move will occur {+|-} two weeks around 4.0.0.
Action Item: LJ will research the security implications of shared access (i.e. controlling writes) in github.
Automated testing
Justin Salmon finished the automatic development framework and developed some functionality tests which include:
- GSI, Kerberos, frm, meta-manager
- Automatic cluster instantiations
- Copy back/forth, stats
- Fuse test for meta operations
Additional tests are needed, especially in testing performance retrogression. Some tests came from Doug Strain (OSG). In fact, we will encourage OSG involvement with the anticipation that they will adopt the automated test framework. In any case, we need more test programs from participants.
Action Item: ABH will ask Wei Yang and Doug Benjamin for test programs
Action Item: ABH will add Justin to xrootd-dev and obtains a SLAC account for him.
Software development for 6 months
While the following list seems short, given all the activity in producing the 4.0.0 release it should come as no surprise. So far we have:
- Parallel writes in new client.
- Third party copy using a delegated proxy certificate.