[CP2K:506] Re: cp2k release goals

[Teodoro Laino]

Ciao Luca,

On 5 Jan 2008, at 16:03, luca wrote:

> Most persons with not equivalent CV can use famous (some not free  
> and not good ) programs because there are
> a lot of documentations, user guides, howto, and case studies.
> In contrast there are some very good and free program that are  
> unknow/unused to the community
> and they seem do not have a lot of documentation. Is there a  
> relationship?
> Make some tutorials or case studies, can help to debug the program  
> and  can be
> a good start point for old user and new user.

That's absolutely true. But the power of the open source community is  
mainly based on the fact that everybody
contributes even with a small stone to the construction of the main  
building, under a continuous refereed work
(since each line (of source, tutorials, case studies, documentation)  
you make public can in principle be double-checked
by trillions of people).
But exactly as I said previously for the release topic:  
documentation, tutorials and case studies requires lots of
human power (ask Axel how much efforts he put in the CPMD  
tutorial ;-) at the same time I think that once the
tutorial was made public he also received many comments about it..  
and also possible bug fixes of things he wrote)..
well the point is that  human power specifically for these kind of  
things is always highly appreciated..

cp2k can become better and better if more and more people will start  
contributing to it.. not necessarily implementing
new things.. also offering help, as you said, in writing a more clear  
documentation, tutorials, case studies or offering
help for maintaining a release.
Sooo Sooo... what should I say more? ;-)

Teo

> It is only another suggestion....I hope that it is interesting
>
> Ciao
>   Luca
>
>
>
>>
>> Hi Axel, hi all,
>>
>> that's a very good point and you will have my full support for it!
>> I fully understand that one of the weakness of cp2k is the lack of a
>> proper release, that's why
>> I always was/am for starting releasing the code.
>>
>> Discussing many times with other developers we always stopped the
>> "release" topic because
>> we all agreed that somehow we had not enough man power to keep a
>> developer tree and a
>> release tree.
>>
>> But (there's always a but...) if there is anyone out of there willing
>> to offer some man-power
>> in order to FULLY keep the release tree, this would be the keystone
>> in order to solve the big issue
>> related with releasing cp2k.
>> I Mean with "keeping a release tree" all the kind of "dirty" job
>> connected with it (possible bug
>> fixes, testing on several architectures, etc)? Of course, I think you
>> will have some kind of help from
>> developers (at least from me), but keep in mind that the person
>> willing to keep the release should
>> put most of the work on it.
>>
>> Regarding where branching the release w.r.t. the developer tree, with
>> the present implementation speed
>> it would be anyway difficult to wait for possible implementation, so
>> what I suggest is to fix a date for a release,
>> branch the release tree, fully "clean" that tree (i.e. take out
>> features not fully working and leave only the ones
>> tested). All other pending implementations will be for the next one
>> (we should also decide the period (1 year?) for
>> keeping a standard release speed).
>>
>> In any case I would be for setting a set of rules on how to release.
>> I'm not an expert about that but a sort of discipline
>> is absolutely mandatory in my opinion (I'm trying to push it harder
>> also for the developers' tree).
>>
>> Anyway once there will be one offering himself as volunteer we can
>> really start to plan everything.
>> Hope releasing cp2k will be soon a goal!
>>
>> Ciao,
>> teo
>>
>> On 4 Jan 2008, at 12:59, Jörg Saßmannshausen wrote:
>>
>>>
>>> Dear all,
>>>
>>> Happy New Year as well!
>>>
>>> I second Alex' suggestion and I volunteer for the different  
>>> platforms.
>>> I can offer:
>>> AMD: Opteron and AMDx2 (debian etch, 64 bit)
>>> Intel: Xeon (debian etch, 32bit, 2.80GHz) and some old PIII (debian
>>> etch,
>>> Coppermine, 866 MHz).
>>> I got access to the latest Intel Compiler (10.x) and also some
>>> Portland
>>> compilers (if needed).
>>> Most of the machines are clustered with either GbE oder 100 Mbit
>>> and we are
>>> using MPICH2 as a MPI (yes, I know about OpenMPI ;-) ).
>>> Maybe that helps a bit and encourages others to work on the project
>>> as well.
>>>
>>> All the best from Graz
>>>
>>> Jörg
>>>
>>>> == 1 of 1 ==
>>>> Date: Thurs, Jan 3 2008 7:44 am
>>>> From: Axel
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> happy new year everybody!
>>>>
>>>> since the beginning of a new year is also a time for
>>>> making plans and resolutions, i'd like to revive a subject
>>>> that has been discussed quite a bit, but is important to
>>>> many cp2k _users_: a cp2k release.
>>>>
>>>> IMO cp2k has gained significant maturity over the last
>>>> year(s) and despite plenty of new and exciting developments,
>>>> many cp2k users simply need a point of reference version that
>>>> (super)computing center staff can support for them and where
>>>> one can write pre-and post-processing tools for without having
>>>> to change the code every other day or so.
>>>>
>>>> in order set the bar not too high, i'd like to simply start
>>>> a discussion on what features are ready to be used for
>>>> production or which features people would (realistically!!)
>>>> like to see in a release and which needs most urgent fixing.
>>>>
>>>> once this is settled, the next step would be to gang up and
>>>> collect and run proper release tests on as many different
>>>> platforms as possible and finally find people that are willing
>>>> to maintain a release branch (i.e. carry over bugfixes from
>>>> the development, maintain backward compatibility).
>>>>
>>>> what do you all think?
>>>>
>>>> cheers,
>>>>     axel.
>>>
>>> -- 
>>> *************************************************************
>>> Jörg Saßmannshausen
>>> Institut für chemische Technologie organischer Stoffe
>>> TU-GrazIn any case I would be for setting a set of rules on how  
>>> to release.
> I'm not an expert about that but a sort of discipline
> is absolutely mandatory in my opinion (I'm trying to push it harder
> also for the developers' tree
>>> Stremayrgasse 16
>>> 8010 Graz
>>> Austria
>>>
>>> phone: +43 (0)316 873 8954
>>> fax: +43 (0)316 873 4959
>>> homepage: http://sassy.formativ.net/
>>>
>>> Please avoid sending me Word or PowerPoint attachments.
>>> See http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/no-word-attachments.html
>>>
>>>>
>>
>>
>>>
>>
>
>
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> >