Minutes of the Geant4 Technical Steering Board Meeting

4 October 2002

Attendance:

CERN: John Apostolakis (chairman), Pedro Arce, Gabriele Cosmo, Andrea Dell'Acqua, Albert De Roeck, Gunter Folger, Vladimir Ivantchenko, Juergen Knobloch, Maria Grazia Pia, Florence Ranjard, Johannes Peter Wellisch

IN2P3 : Marc Verderi

KEK: Katsuya Amako, Takashi Sasaki

SLAC: Makoto Asai, Dennis Wright

TRIUMF: Peter Gumplinger

Minutes: D.H. Wright - 5 October 2002

Release Policy

• The nominal release period begins November 1st, with the first group of tags due at that time. December 2nd will mark the end of system testing with the release scheduled for December 13th.
• The Geant4 Users' Workshop at CERN in November makes the above schedule very tight, especially with the required testing of cuts per region.
• It is possible to make a public release of everything except cuts per region according to the above schedule. Cuts per region could be included as a development tag and tested during January, anticipating a later public release.
• It should be advertised at the release that the old cuts-per-material functionality is expected to disappear by the mid-2003 release
• Advanced example testing should be integrated into the release schedule
• It was agreed that:
  • 5.0 will be released in December as scheduled but without cuts-per-region
  • The date when the cuts-per-region tags are ready will be determined shortly
  • A solid cuts-per-region development tag will be ready by the end of January so that testing can be done in time for the next public release
• Category coordinators please check Gabriele's list of features for 5.0

LIP membership in GEANT4

• The Lisbon group has proposed to join Geant4 and to provide 1.25 collaboration units. The effort will be in the Low Energy Electromagnetic group and will concentrate on precision angular distributions in bremsstrahlung, medical applications and other low energy enhancements.
• The LIP group requires a document of membership in order to secure funding. The TSB welcomes their participation and recommends to the CB their membership.

Geant4 Organizational Structure and MOU

• At the previous TSB meeting (1 Oct 2002), an extensive discussion of the Geant4 organization and MOU took place (see minutes). Two paths towards the development of a new MOU emerged:
  • respond to Richard Mount's draft of the new MOU by preparing a new version based on a new organizational structure
  • augment Richard's list of problems with pros and cons from the TSB point of view. Use this list as a set of points that any new MOU should address.
• The augmented list of pros and cons was presented and some were discussed. This list will be distributed by e-mail to TSB members. Members may then add their names to the list of people agreeing to the problems. This will then form the basis of an e-mail discussion which could eventually lead to a new version of the MOU.
• It was emphasized that while timely action must be taken on this matter (preferably by the end of the year), the process must not be rushed.