While watching "The Wizard of Oz", the greatest movie ever made, I took a shot at building 
midas on my macosx computer. After stumbling on a few small and on a few hard problems, I 
built almost everything. However, odb does not work- some further debugging is in order.

Anyway, the easy problems are:
- a few missing header files: pty.h, sys/vfs.h, malloc.h
- a few missing features in system.c (stime(), "get tape position")
- /usr/include/string.h already has strlcpy() & co.
- dbg_malloc() has inconsistent prototypes (size_t vs unsigned int)
- for reasons unknown, PVM is #defined. This flushed a bug in mana.c

A few hard problems:
- namespace pollution by Apple- they #define ALIGN in system headers, colliding with ALIGN 
in midas.h. I was amazed that the two are almost identical, but MIDAS ALIGN aligns to 8 
bytes, while Apple does 4 bytes. ALIGN is used all over the place and I am not sure how to 
reconcile this.
- "timezone" in mhttpd.c. On linux, it's an "int", on darwin, it's a function. What gives?
- building libmidas.a requires running ranlib
- building libmidas.so requires unknown macosx specific magic.

For your enjoyment, the "cvs diff" is attached. The resulting code is known to not work.

K.O.

Ok, taking all comments so far into account, I conclude adopting the ROOT 
coding style would be best for us. So I put

indent:
	find . -name "*.[hc]" -exec indent -kr -nut -i3 {} \;

Into the makefile. Hope everybody is happy now (;-)))

> I don't feel a strong need of giving up a "-i2"...

I am comfortable with the current MIDAS styling convention and I would rather not
have yet another private religious war over the right location for the curley braces.

If we are to consider changing the MIDAS coding convention, I urge all and sundry
to read the ROOT coding convention, as written by Rene Brun and Fons Rademakers at
http://root.cern.ch/root/Conventions.html. The ROOT people did their homework, they
did read the literature and they produced a well considered and well argumented style.

Also, while there, do read the Taligent documentation- by far, one of the most
coherent manuals to C++ programming style.

K.O.

Hi Paul,

I agree with you that a nesting level of more than 4-5 is a bad thing, but I 
believe that throughout the midas code, this level is not exceeded (my poor 
mind also does not hold more than 5 things (;-) ). An indent level of 8 columns 
alone does hot force you too much in not extending the nesting level. I have 
seen code which does that, so there are nesting levels of 8 and more, which 
ends up that the code is smashed to the right side of the screen, where each 
statement is broken into many line since each line only holds 10 or 20 
characters. All the nice real estate on the left side of the scree is lost.

So having said that, I don't feel a strong need of giving up a "-i2", since the 
midas code does not contain deep nesting levels and hopefully will never have. 
In my opinion, a small indent level makes more use of your screen space, since 
you do not have a large white area at the left. A typical nesting level is 3-4, 
which causes already 32 blank charactes at the left, or 1/3 of your screen, 
just for nothing. It will lead to more lines (even with -l90), so people have 
to scroll more.

What do others think (Pierre, Konstantin, Renee) ?

Hi Stefan,

> once and forever, I am considering using the "indent" program which comes 
> with every linux installation. Running indent regularly on all our code 
> ensures a consistent look.

I think this can be called a Good Thing.

> The "-kr" style does the standard K&R style, 
> but used tabs (which is not good), and does a 4-column 
> indention which is I think too much. So I would propose 
> following flags:
>        indent -kr -nut -i2 -di8 -bad <filename.c>

(some of this is a repeat from an earlier mail to SR):
You might also want a -l90 for a longer line length than 75
characters.  K&R style with indentation from 5 to 8 spaces
is a good indicator of complexity: as soon as 40 characters
of code wind up unreadably squashed to the right of the
screen, you have to refactor to have less indentation
levels.  This means you wind up rolling up the inner parts
of deeply nested conditionals or loops as separate
functions, making the whole code easier to understand.

I think that setting -i2 is ``going around the problem'' 
of deep nesting.  If you really need to keep the indentation 
tabs less than 4 (8 is ideal) because your code is falling off the 
right edge of the screen, you are indented too deeply.  Why do 
I say that?  There is the famous ``7+-1'' idea that you can hold
in you head only 7 ideas (give or take one) at any time.  I'm not 
that smart and I top out at about 5:  So for example, a conditional 
in a loop  in a conditional in a switch is about as deep a level 
of nesting as  I can easily understand (remember that I also have 
to hold the line i'm working on as well): that's 4 levels, plus one for the
function itself and we are at 40 characters away from the right edge
of the screen using -i8 and have some 40 characters available for writing code
(how often is a line of code really longer than about 40 characters?).
On top of that, the indentation is easily seen so you know immediately 
wheather you are at the upper conditional, or inner conditional.  A -i2
just doesn't make the difference big enough.  -i5 is a happy balance 
with enough visual clue as to the indentation level, but leaves you 50
to 60 characters for the code line itself.

However, if you are indenting very deeply, then the poor reader can't hold
on to the context: there are more than 6 or 7 things to keep in mind.
In those cases, roll up the inner levels as a separate function and 
call it that way. The inner complexity of the nested statements gets 
nicely abstracted and then dumb people like me can understand what 
you are doing.

So, in brief: indent is a good idea, and -in with n>=4 will be best.
I don't think -i2 will lend itself to making the code so much easier 
to read.

thanks for listening.
.p.

> I want midas alarms to go off when I cannot ping arbitrary remote hosts. Is
> there is easy/preferred way to do this? K.O.

There are "internal alarms" with type AT_EVALUATED. Just find a program 
where you can put some code which gets periodically executed (like the idle 
loop in the frontend), and so something like:

DWORD last = 0;

  if (ss_time() > last+60)
    {
    last = ss_time();

    /* do a ping via socket(), bind() and connect() */
    ...

    if (status != CM_SUCCESS)
      al_trigger_alarm("XYZ Ping", str, "Warning", 
                       "Host is dead", AT_INTERNAL);
    }

Pierre does the same thing in lazylogger.c, just have a look. I don't know 
how to do a ping correctly in C, I guess you have to send an UDP packet 
somewhere, but I never did it. If you find it out, please post it.


 

The current Triumf DAQ standard (Midas) since the second quarter of this
year (2003) has the capability to deal with ROOT histograms. The internal
midas logger can save data files in ROOT format and the analyzer can book
and fill ROOT histograms. These features triggered a new project started
during summer 2003 for building a Triumf GUI ROOT/Midas display utility.

The initial requirements for this utility are:
1) Solely based on ROOT (VirtualX, no Qt)
2) Similar overall functionality than PAW.
   - Open concurrent ROOT files.
   - Open connection to a single Midas Online experiment (requires analyzer
                                                          as server)
   - Optional Auto-update in ONLINE mode.
   - Zoning, Zooming option display.
   - Simple Historgram gaphic manipulation. (based on current ROOT
                                             implementation)
   - Tree manipulation ( use of TBrowser())
   - Simple user script invocation.
   - Optional experiment specific customization.
3) Session configuration save/restore option.

An initial version has been developed and currently is under evaluation.
Improvement and further development will based on the local experimenters
responses. 

This utility will be available for external use around the second quarter of
the 2004 at the latest.

.

Dear all,

there are continuing requests about the C indent style we use in midas. As 
you know, the current style does not comply with any standard. It is even 
a mixture of styles since code comes from different people. To fix this 
once and forever, I am considering using the "indent" program which comes 
with every linux installation. Running indent regularly on all our code 
ensures a consistent look. So I propose (actually the idea came from Paul 
Knowles) to put a new section in the midas makefile:

indent:
        find . -name "*.[hc]" -exec indent <flags> {} \;

so one can easily do a "make indent". The question is now how the <flags> 
should look like. The standard is GNU style, but this deviates from the 
original K&R style such that the opening "{" is put on a new line, which I 
use but most of you do not. The "-kr" style does the standard K&R style, 
but used tabs (which is not good), and does a 4-column indention which is 
I think too much. So I would propose following flags:

indent -kr -nut -i2 -di8 -bad <filename.c>

Please take some of your source code, and format it this way, and let me 
know if these flags are a good combination or if you would like to have 
anything changed. It should also be checked (->PAA) that this style 
complies with the DOC++ system. Once we all agree, I can put it into the 
makefile, execute it and commit the newly formatted code for the whole 
source tree.

I committed several small fixes and changes:

- install.txt which mentions explicitly ROOT
- mana.c and the main Makefile which fixes all HBOOK compiler warnings
- mana.c to write an explicit warning if the experiment directoy contains 
uppercase letters in the path (HBOOK does not like this and refuses to 
read/write histos)
- mserver.c, mrpc.c, odb.c to fix a wrong parameter in 
db_remove_open_record() (see previous entry from Paul)
- added experim.h into the dependency of the hbookexpt Makefile

Hi Paul,

sorry my late reply, I had to find some time for debugging your problem. 
Thank you very much for the detailed description of the problem, I wish all 
bug reports would be such elaborate!

You were right that there was a bug in the RPC system. The function 
db_remove_open_record() got a new parameter recently, which was not changed 
in the RPC call, and caused the mserver side to crash on any 
db_close_record() call.

I fixed it and the update is under CVS (http://midas.psi.ch/cgi-
bin/cvsweb/midas/src/). Since you need to update many files, I wonder if I 
should enable anonymous CVS read access. Does anybody know how to set this 
up using "ssh" as the protocol (via CVS_RSH=ssh)?

Please note that db_close_record() is not necessary as 
cm_disconnect_experiment() takes care of this, but having it there does not 
hurt.

Hi All,

I have found a weird one:

The following code executes on the frontend machine in the
frontend_exit() routine, and connects to the odb running on
another separate machine:
...
     cm_msg(MINFO,__func__, "line %d", __LINE__);

     cm_get_experiment_database(&hdb, NULL);

     cm_msg(MINFO,__func__, "line %d", __LINE__);
     status = db_find_key(hdb, 0, "/Experiment/Run Parameters", &hkey);
     cm_msg(MINFO,__func__, "line %d, hkey=%d, status=%d",
            __LINE__, hkey, status);
     checkstat("db_find_key returned status %d", status);
     cm_msg(MINFO,__func__, "line %d", __LINE__);
     status = db_close_record(hdb, hkey);

     /* NOTREACHED!! the above call to db_close_record
        doesn't return!
      */
     cm_msg(MINFO,__func__, "line %d, status=%d", __LINE__, status);
     checkstat("db_close_record returned status %d", status);

checkstat is a macro that does the following:
#define checkstat(format, arg...)\
do{ if(status != DB_SUCCESS) {\
cm_msg(MERROR, __func__, format, ## arg);\
return FE_ERR_ODB;}}while(0)

The key exists, and the status of the search is 1
(i.e., DB_SUCCESS) and rest of the code tries to run.  What gets
really weird is that the db_close_record _doesn't_ _return_.
The code following the NOTREACHED comment just doesn't get
called.  I get the message from the __LINE__ just in front
of the call, but not the message afterwards (cm_msg and printf 
were tried).  Somehow db_close_record is causing a non-local 
exit or signal or something. No error message is printed and the 
frontend continues to exit with exit code 0.  But, since the rest
of my frontend_exit/odb closing doesn't happen, the odb is left in
a lost state requiring a cleanup.  If I comment out the calls to 
db_close_record, the rest of my frontend_exit runs normally 
and the cm_disconnect_experiment() in mfe.c eventually closes my 
open records correctly (I expect, anyway) and this is the present 
workaround i am using.  The terror i have is that several of my 
hotlinked callback routines will call the close_record routine 
when resetting illegal values.  No end of hilarity will result there...

I was using the same code in the frontend under 1.9.2 and
have only recently upgraded to 1.9.3-? tarball from PAA and 
there were no problems using the 1.9.2 code: this is a 1.9.3
issue.

I have localized the weirdness to what I think is the RPC interface.
Running the nullfrontend (no camac access) on the same machine as 
hosts the ODB I can make the problem appear and disappear in the 
following way:
(odb is local on machine ``monet'')

nullfe -h monet -e acqmonad     : db_close_record will get lost

nullfe -e acqmonad              : db_close_record works as expected.

I've tried also with the patch for the 256 byte odb string bug since
many of the open records have strings of that length, but that isn't
it. The only substancial looking change to mserver from 1.9.2 to 1.9.3
is the SIGPIPE ignore and that doesn't look like a good candidate either.
Can this be that some of the 
   #IFDEF LOCAL_ROUTINES
that got moved about in odb.c and others
are causing the remote call to get confused?

Clearly the answer is to just use stable and happy 1.9.2, but the 
people for whom I am working now really want to use ROOT for
an analyzer...


cheers,
.p.

Paul Knowles.                   phone: 41 26 300 90 64
email: Paul.Knowles@unifr.ch      Fax: 41 26 300 97 47
finger me at pexppc33.unifr.ch for more contact information

> root -l
root> TFile *f = new TFile("run00064.root")
root> TTree *t = f->Get("Trigger")
root> t->StartViewer() // look at the ROOT TTree
root> t->MakeSelector() // generates Trigger.h, Trigger.C

edit run.C, the main program:
{
gROOT->Reset();
TFile f("data/run00064.root");
TTree *t = f.Get("Trigger");

TH1D* adc8 = new TH1D("adc8","ADC8",1500,0,1500-1);
TH1D* tdc2 = new TH1D("tdc2","TDC2",1500,0,1500-1);
TH2D* h12 = new TH2D("h2","ADC8 vs TDC2",100,0,1500,100,0,1500);
TH2D* h12cut = new TH2D("h2cut","ADC8 vs TDC2",50,0,1000-1,50,0,1500);

TSelector *s = TSelector::GetSelector("Trigger.C");
t->Process(s);

adc8->Draw();
tdc2->Draw();
h12->Draw();
h12cut->Draw();
}

edit Trigger.C:

Bool_t Trigger::ProcessCut(Int_t entry)
{
  fChain->GetTree()->GetEntry(entry);
  if (entry%100 == 0) printf("entry %d\r",entry);
  return kTRUE;
}

void Trigger::ProcessFill(Int_t entry)
{
  adc8->Fill(ADCS_ADCS[8]);
  tdc2->Fill(TDCS_TDCS[2]);
  h12->Fill(TDCS_TDCS[2],ADCS_ADCS[8]);
  if (ADCS_ADCS[8] > 100)
    h12cut->Fill(TDCS_TDCS[2],ADCS_ADCS[8]);
}

Run the analysis:

root -l
root> .x run.C

K.O.

> root -l
root> TFile *f = new TFile("run00064.root")
root> TTree *t = f->Get("Trigger")
root> t->StartViewer() // look at the ROOT TTree
root> t->MakeSelector() // generates Trigger.h, Trigger.C

edit run.C, the main program:
{
gROOT->Reset();
TFile f("data/run00064.root");
TTree *t = f.Get("Trigger");

TH1D* adc8 = new TH1D("adc8","ADC8",1500,0,1500-1);
TH1D* tdc2 = new TH1D("tdc2","TDC2",1500,0,1500-1);
TH2D* h12 = new TH2D("h2","ADC8 vs TDC2",100,0,1500,100,0,1500);
TH2D* h12cut = new TH2D("h2cut","ADC8 vs TDC2",50,0,1000-1,50,0,1500);

TSelector *s = TSelector::GetSelector("Trigger.C");
t->Process(s);

adc8->Draw();
tdc2->Draw();
h12->Draw();
h12cut->Draw();
}

edit Trigger.C:

Bool_t Trigger::ProcessCut(Int_t entry)
{
  fChain->GetTree()->GetEntry(entry);
  if (entry%100 == 0) printf("entry %d\r",entry);
  return kTRUE;
}

void Trigger::ProcessFill(Int_t entry)
{
  adc8->Fill(ADCS_ADCS[8]);
  tdc2->Fill(TDCS_TDCS[2]);
  h12->Fill(TDCS_TDCS[2],ADCS_ADCS[8]);
  if (ADCS_ADCS[8] > 100)
    h12cut->Fill(TDCS_TDCS[2],ADCS_ADCS[8]);
}

Run the analysis:

root -l
root> .x run.C

K.O.

> root -l
root> TFile *f = new TFile("run00064.root")
root> TTree *t = f->Get("Trigger")
root> t->StartViewer() // look at the ROOT TTree
root> t->MakeSelector() // generates Trigger.h, Trigger.C

edit run.C, the main program:
{
gROOT->Reset();
TFile f("data/run00064.root");
TTree *t = f.Get("Trigger");

TH1D* adc8 = new TH1D("adc8","ADC8",1500,0,1500-1);
TH1D* tdc2 = new TH1D("tdc2","TDC2",1500,0,1500-1);
TH2D* h12 = new TH2D("h2","ADC8 vs TDC2",100,0,1500,100,0,1500);
TH2D* h12cut = new TH2D("h2cut","ADC8 vs TDC2",50,0,1000-1,50,0,1500);

TSelector *s = TSelector::GetSelector("Trigger.C");
t->Process(s);

adc8->Draw();
tdc2->Draw();
h12->Draw();
h12cut->Draw();
}

edit Trigger.C:

Bool_t Trigger::ProcessCut(Int_t entry)
{
  fChain->GetTree()->GetEntry(entry);
  if (entry%100 == 0) printf("entry %d\r",entry);
  return kTRUE;
}

void Trigger::ProcessFill(Int_t entry)
{
  adc8->Fill(ADCS_ADCS[8]);
  tdc2->Fill(TDCS_TDCS[2]);
  h12->Fill(TDCS_TDCS[2],ADCS_ADCS[8]);
  if (ADCS_ADCS[8] > 100)
    h12cut->Fill(TDCS_TDCS[2],ADCS_ADCS[8]);
}

Run the analysis:

root -l
root> .x run.C

K.O.

> Fixed and committed. Can you check if it's working?
Yes, it is fixed. Thanks. K.O.

> I have noticed a problem with deleting a key to an array in odb, then
> recreating the record as in the code below. The record is recreated
> successfully, but when viewing it with mhttpd, a spurious blank line
> (coloured orange) is visible, followed by the rest of the data as normal.
> 
> db_create_record(hDB,0,"/Equipment/Cycle_scalers/Settings/",strcomb(type1_str));
>     }
>   else {
>     exp_mode = 2; /* TDmusr types - noscans */
>     status =
> db_create_record(hDB,0,"/Equipment/Cycle_scalers/Settings/",strcomb(type2_str));
>   }

The first problem is that the db_create_record has a trailing "/" in the key name 
after Settings. This causes the (empty) subsirectory which causes your trouble. 
Simple removing it fixes the problem. I agree that this is not obvious, so I 
added some code in db_create_record() which removes such a trailing slash if 
present. New version under CVS.

Second, the db_create_record() call is deprecated. You should use the new 
function db_check_record() instead, and remove your db_delete_key(). This avoids 
possible ODB trouble since the structure is not re-created each time, but only 
when necessary.

- Stefan

Fixed and committed. Can you check if it's working?

> fal.c does not compile: it calls cm_cleanup() with one argument when there
> should be two arguments. K.O.

Fixed and committed.

> > I have therefore implemented the function 
> > db_check_record(HNDLE hDB, HNDLE hKey, char *keyname, char *rec_str, BOOL
> correct)
> 
> Stephan, something is very wrong with the new code. My
> "/logger/channels/0/settings" is being destroyed on "begin run".

Okey. I found the problem in db_check_record(): when we decide that we have a
mismatch, we call db_create_record(...,rec_str), but by this time, rec_str no
longer points to the beginning of the ODB string because we started parsing it.

I tried this solution: save rec_str into rec_str_orig, then when we decide that
we have a mismatch, call db_create_record() with this saved rec_str_orig. It
fixes my immediate problem (destruction of "/logger/channels/0/settings"), but is
it correct?

I would like to fix it ASAP to get cvs-head working again: our mhttpd dumps core
on an assert() failure in db_create_record() and the set of db_check_record()
changes might fix it for me.

Here is the CVS diff:

RCS file: /usr/local/cvsroot/midas/src/odb.c,v
retrieving revision 1.73
diff -r1.73 odb.c
7810a7811
> char             *rec_str_orig = rec_str;
7820c7821
<     return db_create_record(hDB, hKey, keyname, rec_str);
---
>     return db_create_record(hDB, hKey, keyname, rec_str_orig);
7838c7839
<       return db_create_record(hDB, hKey, keyname, rec_str);
---
>       return db_create_record(hDB, hKey, keyname, rec_str_orig);
8023c8024
<               return db_create_record(hDB, hKey, keyname, rec_str);
---
>               return db_create_record(hDB, hKey, keyname, rec_str_orig);
8037c8038
<               return db_create_record(hDB, hKey, keyname, rec_str);
---
>               return db_create_record(hDB, hKey, keyname, rec_str_orig);

K.O.

fal.c does not compile: it calls cm_cleanup() with one argument when there
should be two arguments. K.O.