[Rivet] Phone/Skype meeting

[Frank Siegert]

Andy Buckley, Thursday 01 October 2009:
> ;) Yes, I saw that. I think while we still have to support earlier
> HepMC versions (or do we?... discuss),

If ATLAS is using 2.05 now (you mentioned that in one of your last 
emails?), I don't have any use-case for supporting older HepMC's if it's 
problematic.

> the detection needs to be done
> in the C++ code rather than having to --- somehow --- build slightly
> different Python interfaces for different HepMCs.

I am strongly in favour of this. Actually I'd go further and say that we 
should probably move all the HepMC-related bits out of bin/rivet into the 
analysis handler, it's only ~20 lines. If you think that's worthwhile and 
possible, I could try that out. This would allow us to get rid of the 
Python HepMC interface completely.

> We need to think about whether we can release Rivet 1.2.0 before
> committing to a histogramming port: using better histo classes will
> really open up what we can do, but it will be a rather major porting
> exercise, involving changes to scripts which currently expect AIDA as
> well as updating analyses which expect to use AIDA or LWH objects.

In my opinion 1.2.0 should come before the histogramming overhaul (which 
you also called next-to-next release) and on a shorter timescale, i.e. O(1 
month). As you said we have some actual improvements which we want to get 
out before committing to an overhaul which probably will take some time 
before the dust settles.

Frank