We propose a plan to allow users of the AAT/PPI to pick which release of CASA is used to process their request, and further, to allow the Data Analysts of the NAASC and DSOC to each specify the default CASA version for ALMA and VLA requests respectively.
Note: this specifically only covers user requests, it does not cover system requests, such as calibration or imaging pipelines. For system requests the version of CASA the AAT/PPI uses by default is a configuration property that can be changed by editing a properties file:
- /home/casa/capo/$PROFILE.properties
Where $PROFILE is nmtest or nmprod for the DSOC (VLA) and vatest or vaprod for NAASC (ALMA). For the DSOC, the value of this property is currently the path to a symbolic link the DAs can change at will.
Also, this does not address the need to provide users with a restore process that uses the same version of CASA to do the restore that was used to do the calibration. What we will initially provide users is the choice of which CASA release to use, one of which is marked as the default. We will address the version dependency for restores once we start tracking which CASA release produced the calibration products for a given observation.
What we need to offer users this capability is:
- a directory of CASA releases that is common to both sites, and
- a mechanism for the DAs to specify which release is the default for their domain for the production AAT/PPI and which is the default for the test version of the AAT/PPI
For 1 we recommend /home/casa/packages/$OS/release, this directory is mirrored from CV to NM and thus is the same for both, and it is free from pre-releases, which we don't want to expose to end users.
For 2 we suggest the DAs create symbolic links under /home/casa/packages/$OS/release: nmprod, nmtest, vaprod and vatest, that point to the DSOC's production and test CASAes and the NAASC's production and test CASAes.
The AAT/PPI will look in /home/casa/packages/$OS/release, and every directory it finds there will be added to the list of available CASA versions, then the AAT/PPI will mark which option is the default by following the appropriate symbolic link.
We should investigate how often this directory is mirrored, and if it is infrequently, we should ask the helpdesk to provide a way for the DAs to trigger the mirroring.