Challenges in Code Discoverability: or: life after - - PowerPoint PPT Presentation
Challenges in Code Discoverability: or: life after google.com/codesearch? Peter Teuben (UMD) Peter Teuben (UMD) Allice Allen (Calverton, MD) Allice Allen (Calverton, MD) Antikythera Robert Nemiroff (MTU) Robert Nemiroff (MTU) Lior Shamir
Long Term Preservation of Analysis Capabilities in Astronomy Software Antikythera
Weiner et al.(2009) whitepaper for 2010 decadal
Software wants to be free ; Manifesto
Shortridge (2009) – 2008 ADASS – AstroShare
Talk amongst yourselves
Gray & Mann (2011) – 2010 ADASS BoF
Need our own journal?
Grosbol & Tody (2010) -
More efficient access to software
Code Types: (very heterogeneous)
Telescopes Control Data Reduction & Pipelines Data Analysis Data Modeling
Code Correctness
Regression Testing Reproducibility, Verifiability
Code Sharing
WWII bomb codes, opacity tables Wilson-Devinney (eclipsing binaries) Aarseth (N-body) DAOPHOT, Sextractor GALFIT GADGET 1,2,3, Arepo
freshmeat.net (now: freecode.com)
e.g. HDF
sourcecode.org
e.g. Sextractor, Stellarium
github.net (w/ SCM)
e.g. s2plot
google.code.com (w/ SCM)
e.g. CASA core
AstroWEB (1994 Jackson/Wells/Adorf)
Different views of the same database, hosted at 7
ASDS (-1998; Hanisch et al.) AstroForge (2003-2005; Brunner et al.)
Modeled after sourceforge
SkySoft (2001-; Baffa, Giani & Checcucci) ASCL v1 (1999-2002 ; Wallin & Nemiroff)
IAU endorsed code repositories
SOFA (coordinates) + validation suite
AstroCode (2006-2011; Moore) Astro-Sim AstroShare (2008- ; Shortridge) Many many meta listings (e.g. wikiversity, ...)
March 1999 – Feb 2002 37 codes from/used in peer reviewed papers How many survived:
17 have still working URLs (1 redirect) 17 have dead URLs 1 has dead URL, but code download works 2 were only on ASCL v1 33 are now in ASCL v2
published codes
340 342 345 published codes, existing publications
Uses phpBB (off APOD)
Discussion threads Each Discussion is a Code Entry
Advisory Committee
Teuben (chair), Nemiroff, Wallin, Mink, Berriman,
Allen (editor)
White Paper – in prep.
0 = with regression / validation suite 1 = peer reviewed journal 2 = conference proceedings style 3 = web site 4 = word of mouth
Literate programming
CWEB (Knuth) Amrita (www.amrita-ebook.org) CDF (Wolfram Research)
Algorithm detectors Cross-indexing
Widen the scope?
Part of the IVOA? ADASS?
cf. BoF
we reference the ”methods” and the ”data” - Derriere
Repository? - cf. AstroForge
freshmeat code.google.com github (”AstroForge”) Google summer of code: astrometry.net
ASCL v3???
Weiner et al.(2009) whitepaper for 2010 decadal
Software wants to be free Manifesto
Shortridge (2009) – 2008 ADASS – AstroShare
Talk amongst yourselves
Gray & Mann (2011) – 2010 ADASS BoF
Need our own journal?
Tody & Grosbol (2010) -
More efficient access to Software
Quick and Dirty Intellectual property
Employee Lawyers – don't ask don't tell
Not career advancing
20/80 rules of development/maintenance
Produce wrong results Job Security? Reimplemention always fits better
Observatory Code Syndrome
”specific to my observatory”
Curation? Orphaned code Examples: NEMO
Aarseth codes, making Plummer sphere
Code evolution:
AIPS, SDE, MIRIAD, AIPS++ CASA Gadget1, 2, 3, Arepo
LfA - Linux for Astronomy – software on CD Skysoft - ESO's Mac compilation (Hook et al.) Packaging:
SDSS group – perl based (Lupton) Astromake – shell based (Teuben)