[Rivet] compatibility issues between 2.2.0 and 2.X.X

[Hannes Jung]

Hi Andy and Niccolo

I observed the same problem between 2.2.0 and 2.2.1 with the Cuts system.
In quite a few analysis we had in CMS we were using 2.2.0 and had to change 
for our internal codes to the new definitions.... which is tricky, if it is not clear, what has changed....
and one is not expecting such a change when you only change subversion numbers...
Perhaps it would be good to have clearly defined, what can change between the different version numbers

Cheers
Hannes

> On 29.10.2015, at 15:19, Andy Buckley <andy.buckley at cern.ch> wrote:
> 
> On 29/10/15 14:05, Niccolo' Moretti wrote:
>> Hi Andy,
>> 
>> Thank you for your reply.
>> 
>> The first 2 things that come into my mind are the deprecation of
>> 
>> jetproj.jetsByPt(pt,MAXDOUBLE,etmin,etmax,PSEUDORAPIDITY);
> 
> I'm not quite sure when we removed that -- apologies if it wasn't clearly deprecated before. We brought the Cuts system in in 2.2.0 and it was intended to be a complete replacement for all these confusing numeric signatures.
> 
> I'm pretty sure that none of the hundreds of standard analyses were using this full 5-double signature, hence we didn't maintain the temporary backward compatibility for as long as we have done with some other e.g. projection constructor signatures.
> 
>> and the removal of the '#' from yodas (ie, from '# BEGIN HISTO' to
>> 'BEGIN HISTO').
> 
> This was not intended to be a "visible" change -- the last several versions of YODA are able to read the format with or without leading # signs. So an upgrade to the latest YODA should fix that issue for you, and for further iterations of the YODA format we now have a way to maintain backward compatibility with old files.
> 
> Andy
> 
> 
>> On 29/10/15 14:44, Andy Buckley wrote:
>>> Hi Niccolo,
>>> 
>>> Can you be specific about the deprecations that caused problems? We
>>> typically try to only add functionality and explicitly mark features
>>> as deprecated for some time before removing them in major revisions.
>>> So it sounds like we have carelessly broken something between those
>>> minor versions, probably because the bundled set of 300+ analyses kept
>>> on working.
>>> 
>>> As of 2.3 and 2.4 we are trying to reflect more accurately in the
>>> version numbering whether there have been any significant additions to
>>> the interface, and to flag and deprecate very explicitly when the
>>> preferred ways of doing something change.
>>> 
>>> Apologies for the inconvenience,
>>> Andy
>>> 
>>> 
>>> On 29/10/15 09:51, Niccolo' Moretti wrote:
>>>> To rivet authors,
>>>> 
>>>> I would like to complain about all the recent modifications/deprecations
>>>> occurred in Rivet in the last few updates.
>>>> 
>>>> Together with other physicists in other universities and institutions,
>>>> I'm in charge of a study on the effects of different MC generators on
>>>> particular processes.
>>>> One of the most important thing is therefore to set up an
>>>> universal,common environment to compare the results. Some months ago we
>>>> decided to use Rivet as a validation framework because of its simplicity
>>>> and flexibility.
>>>> 
>>>> Now all of us are in a situation where the analysis source code and the
>>>> output result depend on the used rivet version(and plugins therein). All
>>>> the modifications and deprecations have been done without any
>>>> retro-compatibility function, forcing us to do different outputs and
>>>> codes according to the version, losing in this way the universality that
>>>> we have been looked for.
>>>> 
>>>> Moreover, it's not  possible that such modifications, in some cases,
>>>> have occurred between to contiguous versions, say 2.2.0 and 2.2.1.
>>>> 
>>>> You should know how it's difficult to set up a common environment among
>>>> different universities, institutions, fields (theory and experiments),
>>>> computer architectures and people, and of course, how it's difficult to
>>>> reinstall or updates software in large clusters.
>>>> 
>>>> I hope that in the future all the deprecations will not be done
>>>> instantaneously.
>>>> 
>>>> Regards,
>>>> Niccolo' Moretti
>>>> 
>>>> 
>>>> _______________________________________________
>>>> Rivet mailing list
>>>> Rivet at projects.hepforge.org
>>>> https://www.hepforge.org/lists/listinfo/rivet
>>> 
>>> 
>> 
> 
> 
> -- 
> Dr Andy Buckley, Lecturer / Royal Society University Research Fellow
> Particle Physics Expt Group, University of Glasgow
> _______________________________________________
> Rivet mailing list
> Rivet at projects.hepforge.org <mailto:Rivet at projects.hepforge.org>
> https://www.hepforge.org/lists/listinfo/rivet <https://www.hepforge.org/lists/listinfo/rivet>
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <https://www.hepforge.org/lists-archive/rivet/attachments/20151029/9890ad54/attachment.html>