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 (LTU) Lior Shamir (LTU) Long Term Preservation of Analysis Capabilities in Astronomy Software
Papers 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
Google Code Search (R.I.P.)
Scientific Codes Code Types: (very heterogeneous) Telescopes Control Data Reduction & Pipelines Data Analysis Data Modeling Code Correctness Regression Testing Reproducibility, Verifiability Code Sharing
Brief History of Codes WWII bomb codes, opacity tables Wilson-Devinney (eclipsing binaries) Aarseth (N-body) DAOPHOT, Sextractor GALFIT GADGET 1,2,3, Arepo
Then came the internet
Community Examples 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
Efforts in Astronomy AstroWEB (1994 Jackson/Wells/Adorf) Different views of the same database, hosted at 7 different locations (NRAO still alive!) 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)
Astronomy Efforts (cont'd) IAU endorsed code repositories SOFA (coordinates) + validation suite AstroCode (2006-2011; Moore) Astro-Sim AstroShare (2008- ; Shortridge) Many many meta listings (e.g. wikiversity, ...)
ASCL v1 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
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, Shamir, Hanisch,... and Allen (editor) White Paper – in prep.
ASCL.NET
Which Codes to ”Archive” By ”Support” Levels? 0 = with regression / validation suite 1 = peer reviewed journal 2 = conference proceedings style 3 = web site 4 = word of mouth
Other Literate programming CWEB (Knuth) Amrita (www.amrita-ebook.org) CDF (Wolfram Research) Algorithm detectors Cross-indexing
Future 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???
Papers 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
Audience Poll Show of hands: 1) Have you had your code cited in a paper? 2) who has code that fits in the current ASCL model?
Conclusions
Why (not) release source code? 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
Why (not) release source code? Observatory Code Syndrome ”specific to my observatory”
Software Museum? Curation? Orphaned code Examples: NEMO Aarseth codes, making Plummer sphere Code evolution: AIPS, SDE, MIRIAD, AIPS++ CASA Gadget1, 2, 3, Arepo
Previous Efforts (practical) 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)
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