MINUTES OF THE 33ND STEERING COMMITTEE MEETING

The meeting took place the 3rd June 2019 at Hamburg organized by DESY

Presence: All members of the collaboration where represented. 8 were represented locally and two (SKA-SA and INAF) via remote connection

Budget 2018

Jean-Michel Chaize presented the 2018 budget report. We discussed each point.

Decision: Accepted by unanimous vote

Budget 2019

The budget 2019 previously distributed to all the delegates by email was presented by Andy Götz. It was presented during the meeting for official vote. 

The discussion concerned the following resolutions of the budget proposal document. All other resolution had been previously unanimously accepted via email.

Resolution 1.2: Design and specification of Tango V10 libraries

  • MaxIV says it is difficult to specify what we want in V10 since we have no clear specification of the precise features of the present version (V9). Concerning the management strategy, he insisted on the need for the member institutes to master the specification process.  The Tango partners should invest their own time in this very strategic task and not entrust all the specification process to an external company. 
  • SKA agreed and proposed to start building V9 specification in a formal language
  • MAXIV will make a proposal in this direction and will present it during the plenary meeting
  • Soleil proposes to organize a "specification camp" on their site.

Decision: Accepted by unanimous vote.

Resolution 1.3: Implementation of a prototype (POC) for a Tango V10 library without Corba.

  • MaxIV requested to build the prototype first in C++ language because this language is the most important and it does not have an abstraction layer as Java or Python.
  • DESY proposed to do the prototype only when the specification is written.
  • SKA pointed out that the first work initiated was not in agreement with the initial goal "decouple from Corba" in the existing code rather than starting a fully new code basis.
  • ESRF answered that the present code is too complex and historical to  allow a simple modification and that it was obviously easier and cleaner to start from scratch with state-of-the-art design paradigm.
  • ALBA propose that the first prototype uses CORBA as a plug-able protocol. It has been discussed and we agreed that the first prototype should better use ZMQ

Proposal: The first prototype will be built in C++ and will propose ZMQ as plug-able protocol.

Decision: Accepted by unanimous vote.

Resolution 1.4 Support of PyTango V9

  • SKA would like to participate to the support and maintenance of PyTango but has very few available resources at the moment. Anton proposed to be involved, 
  • We collectively noticed that no company is available to do the work today therefore it is better to invest core member time rather than spending cash on it.

Proposal: to drop this resolution from the budget and to invest the money on other things.

Decision: A group of 3 developers (Jairo and Tiago from Alba and Anton from SKA) will maintain PyTango internally.

Resolution 2.7: Docker images for main services

  • SKA started some work on this item and asked if it is still necessary to pay a company for this.  After a discussion it has been agreed that it is still necessary to involve an industrial partner for guaranteeing a list of dockerized services maintained and up-to-date

Decision: Accepted by unanimous vote.

Resolution 3.2 and 3.3: Tango-controls.org web site development

Decision: We unanimously preferred to drop these resolutions and to better invest the money on software development

Resolution 2.2 and 3.4: Documentation camps and kernel camp

Decision: We unanimously agreed to merge these 2 resolutions and to organize camps where both kernel activity and documentation are addressed.

Overall budget 2019

Decision: All other resolutions and the overall 2019 budget has been unanimously voted and agreed upon

Long term management of the community

ESRF presented the situation. There is currently no-one who can spend 100% of his/her time coordinating and animating the community. It is difficult to justify such an activity to the respective institute managements. MAXIV confirmed that it is easier to justify a budget investment than an in-kind contribution of a staff member to the community. ESRF proposed that the community finance a full time engineer to work 100% for the TANGO development inside one of the institute members. In order to allow this, we should increase our yearly budget and therefore increase the yearly contribution. ESRF asked all the steering committee members to consult their management for a formal agreement of increasing the fees by 50%. DESY asked ESRF to provide a text motivating such a position with a job description.

Next Tango meeting

    The proposal from the IK company to organize the next meeting in St Petersburg jointly with Petersburg Nuclear Physics Institute (PNPI) was presented. There are a large number of Tango users in Russia some of whom have been actively participating in recent Tango meetings. It is a great opportunity for the Tango community to meet the large number of Russian Tango users who might not be able to travel abroad. The workshop organized by IK in Moskow last year, gathered together people from Budka, Dubna, Kurtchatof Institute, University of St Petersburg etc. We discussed the Visa issue. Apparently PNPI can assist Tango delegates in obtaining a Russian Visa.

Proposal: the next Tango meeting to be organized in St Petersburg on the condition that one or more Russian labs using Tango endorse the organisation by IK company

Decision: Accepted by unanimous vote

MAXIV proposed to organize the Tango meeting in 2021.

ICALEPCS TANGO workshop

A call was made for volunteers who can participate to the organisation of the TANGO workshop foreseen as a side workshop of next ICALEPCS conference in October at New York. The following people were identified as attending ICALEPCS 2019 and who could be "volunteers" who could help:

Andy Gotz, Reynald Bourtembourg, Sergi Rubio, Guifré Cuni, Joanes, Vincent Hardion, Alain Buteau, Gwenaelle Abeillé, Marco Lonza.

A website has been setup for the workshop: https://indico.esrf.fr/indico/event/34/