Development

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2017

January 25, 2017

Updates

Items to Discuss

January 11, 2017

Updates

  • [RR] New VisTrails version in Debian [1]

Items to Discuss

  • [RR] Collaboration with school of medicine to port HiC-bench to VisTrails
    • Have homemade workflow system based on R scripts and symlinks
      • Each steps has multiple sets of parameters
      • Submits PBS jobs for each step with each set of parameters, using PBS job metadata to wait on previous step
      • Gets all results in directory structure step3-parameters/step2-parameters/step1-parameters/files
    • VisTrails improves provenance capture and makes editing pipelines easier
      • Need better support for aggregation (groupby operation might be good enough; pandas?)

2016

December 14, 2016

Updates

  • [RR] Single-instance code: over-engineered, but will work
    • (Have to avoid race conditions on startup, and OSes offer very different locking primitives)

Items to Discuss

  • Email from Matt Dirks: combobox should work, ask for more code?
  • Email from marin.nl:
    • looks like they would benefit from new interpreter
    • how to store their consolidated provenance when they exchange .vt files around?

November 30, 2016

Updates

Items to Discuss

  • [RR] Working on single instance code for MARIN (#1205)
    • Remote shutdown ready (#1204)
    • Still improving it
    • Want to return something more structured to the client (success/fail code, stdout, stderr)
    • Should be usable without Qt
  • [DK] Shutting down VisTrails has issues: cleans up interpreter (to remove files) but also resets persistent pipeline for no reason
  • [DK] Working on batch execution using console_mode
  • [DK] Settings aliased parameters when using core.api?

November 16, 2016

Updates

  • [RR] Issue #1200 from @samtux: need to set PyQt to API version 2 before ever importing it; using require_pyqt_api2() does that (also can install bundle)

Items to Discuss

  • Email from Pieter: executing pipelines with parameters from command-line using single-instance
    • Seems to work, main instance gets full command-line and alters configuration temporarily
    • Not sure what his error is (VisTrails returns little information in a lot of cases); though execution error should return something more meaningful
    • Actions:
      • Can add switch to kill main instance
      • Can improve single-instance code to return more meaningful errors + machine-readable output from "client" VisTrails
      • Add client/server code to core that doesn't use Qt? Also need a run.py-line entrypoint that doesn't use gui (calls console mode like gui.application.VistrailsApplicationSingleton#noninteractiveMode())?

November 2, 2016

Updates

  • New version 2.2-2 of Debian package, still wrong copyright, and broken bundle installation
    • Finally replied, says copyright issue will be fixed soon, working on including VisTrails 2.2.4 for Debian Stretch
  • Working on Docker package, low hanging fruit because we have CLTools, and useful for some workflow (also step towards CWL support)

Items to Discuss

October 5, 2016

Items to Discuss

  • working toward a 3.0 release; project board
    • unique ids
    • bundles
    • GUI fixes
    • wrapping updates
    • python3
    • interpreter?
  • command-line input parameters to provenance
    • [DK] we don't create a persisted workflow from those input params, i think
    • [DK] these are already defined as aliases so we treat them differently form a normal input param
    • [DK] still have the potential problem of allowing a user to view the workflow as it was run with a given set of aliases
    • Do the vistrails variables values get stored in provenance? (what if values change?)

September 14, 2016

Updates

Items to Discuss

August 31, 2016

Updates

  • [RR] Went over vgc.poly.edu/vistrails.org config:
    • Added TLS certificate (vistrails.org, www.vistrails.org, lists.vistrails.org, vgc.poly.edu and a few others)
    • Fixed usersguide scripts (won't disappear again)
    • Moved some websites over to HTTPS
    • Websites
  • [RR] users' guide on readthedocs: doesn't seem like we can have both the internal docs (currently there) and users' guide under the same RTD "project"
  • [DK] UUID support almost complete (use-uuid branch), bundle translation then fits more easily on top of that

Items to Discuss

  • [RR] Move www.vistrails.org (wiki) to HTTPS? There is a trac at https://www.vistrails.org/
    • Get rid of more services? (svn, trac, ...)
  • [RR] Notebook execution works. How do we support more languages (than Python)?
    • Need: detection, metadata reader, code to input values
  • [RR] ALPS and VisTrails 2.1 issue: should be using 2.2?

August 17, 2016

Updates

  • [TE] Fixed parameter order upgrade bug that breaks VTK examples.
  • [TE] Matplotlib and sklearn are exportable using module-to-script api
  • [TE] Need to add to_python_script to pythonfunction.py to get bokeh and numpy export working.

Items to Discuss

  • Version checks: Please use a method instead of hard-coded `try: int(v) except ValueError: ...` logic!
  • Mashups: why do they share the same id scope?? (see MashupsManager.createMashupController)
  • [TE] Wrap-up notes

August 10, 2016

Updates

Items to Discuss

  • [TE] Python Wrapper and scripting
    • All changes merged into python-wrapper branch
      • Tests pass
      • Still need to update sub-branches
    • Minor fixes
      • vtkPlot3DReader upgrade bug
      • Added tuple exporting
    • Most of vtk examples can be exported example
      • Sometimes connections are wrong, executing workflow sometimes works, otherwise copy/pasting is necessary
        • Could be a bug in the old vistrail, but not sure
  • [DK] Subworkflows and uuids

August 3, 2016

Updates


Items to Discuss

  • [TE] Wrapper patches now stored as python code
    • Connection variables now lowercase
    • Can we use code as output variables?
      • E.g. "vtk_dataset_mapper.GetOutput(0)"
      • Could mutate output when output method is only supposed to be called once
      • Need to be able to rename output port as python code(e.g. when there are 2 "vtk_dataset_mapper"s)

July 27, 2016

Updates

  • [DK] DB bundle serialization implemented

Items to Discuss 

   def vtkInstance():
       self.vtkInstance = self

July 20, 2016

Updates

Items to Discuss

  • [TE] New patch method for python-wrapper example
    • A patch is a string template with self/input/output variables for patching a class method
    • Patches are stored in xml specification
    • Patches are assigned to methods in ClassSpec's
    • Used both for execution in vistrails and when exporting as script
      • Executed with "exec" when run in vistrails
      • Turns patches into natural calls in script
    • Wrapping VTK library no longer needed
      • Removes ".vtkInstance" (Automatically removed from PythonSources and vtkInteractionHandlers)
    • Removed fix_classes.py (Subclassing of VTK classes to patch methods directly)
    • Also used for port translations (With patch names like "basic:Color#input") (No more ugly input_t method definitions)
    • TODO's
      • Add to export_as_script
      • Patch Modules that represent Python functions as well
  • [vistrails-users] Read data from SQL example?

July 13, 2016

Updates

  • [DK] bundles on sql-alchemy branch
    • Bundle, BundleMapping, and BundleSerializer
    • New BaseSerializers to deal with versions of directory, zip, db serializers
    • Can register the BundleSerializers with the base serializers
    • Translation between bundle versions
    • Bundle.add_object "just works" if an appropriate mapping was registered

Items to Discuss

  • [TE] Simplified running module using API for scripting example
    • API Module can be executed using compute method
      • Takes list of outputs to compute + inputs as keyword arguments
  • Status of general cell synchronization (vistrails-users)

July 6, 2016

Updates

  • [DK] Working on bundles

Items to Discuss

  • [TE] Using vistrails API in scripting example 1 (API with VTK) example 2 (DownloadFile only)
    • Call module in script using vistrails API
    • Can be used when no export method is defined.
  • [TE] Server news bug Critical?
    • [RR] No, unreleased
  • [DK] New bundle organization
    • BundleMapping contains individual mappings from raw objects to BundleObj
    • Must be separate in order to have in-memory, separate from serializer settings

June 29, 2016

Updates

Items to Discuss

  • [TE] Export VTK as python script
    • Works on Terminator (Isosurface, Volume Rendering, clipping plane, combined rendering) example
    • Preludes (imports) still need improvements
    • Works with vtkInteractionHandler (clipping plane)
    • Resulting clipping plane is incorrect? (supposed to hide one side of the plane)
    • vtkRendererOutput Uses VTKRenderWindow as output
      • Should support different output modes?
      • Does not work with multiple outputs (Next cell is displayed when current is closed)
      • Uses wrapped vtkInstance (as vvtk)
        • Create new patch system with code that can be used both in vistrails and in a python script?

June 22, 2016

Updates

Items to Discuss

  • [TE] Fix for upgraded analogies (PR #1177)
    • Uses module location to find module remap (The best we can do right now?)
    • Also fixes remapped port names for connections to existing modules
    • May still fail on complex upgrades like adding a function on an upgraded module that has a different port name
  • [TE] Working on exporting wrapped libraries (VTK)

June 15, 2016

Updates

  • [TE] Added depth logic to python script exporter (full commit)
    • Fully implements connection merging and list looping

Items to Discuss

  • [TE] Making analogy work on upgraded workflows (#1175)
    • Analogy only works We need to use the non-upgraded action chain
    • But pipelines need to be valid (matcher uses module portspecs)
    • Tried to get upgrade remap from upgrade action, but this seems impossible
    • Use module location instead?
      • Location should be identical for one-to-one module upgrades

June 1, 2016

Updates

  • VisTrails 2.2.4 announced (finally)
    • 5 survey replies
    • 47 downloads last week

Items to Discuss

  • [TE] Export VTK as script (python-wrapper)
    • to_python_script
      • needs the pipeline (or at least the connections)
        • Should not generate code for any possible VTK method (exporter detects which ports is used in the source)
        • VTK needs to know connection order
        • Adding functions directly to the script results in nicer code
    • Add support for multiple input connections
    • Add support for list looping

May 25, 2016

Updates

  • Mailing-list fixed
  • Getting stats from the "server news" mechanism (via parser)

Items to Discuss

  • [RR] Alexis doing writeup on VisTrails, curious about interesting streaming use-cases (and potential future users)
  • [TE] Union ports
    • Show union ports in pipeline (DEMO)

May 18, 2016

Items to Discuss

  • [TE] mailing list still down - Julio working on it
  • [TE] Improved union port
    • New schema 1.0.5 adds portitem.union string attribute
    • Works with pipeline view, parameter exploration view, and mashup view
    • Should work well for matplotlib
    • Use with VTK ports?
      • It uses [item_1,item_2] style ports usually with different tuple length.
  • [TE] Remove emacs dependency from db generate #1173

May 11, 2016

Items to Discuss

  • [TE] Union type #1172
    • GUI-based solution Branch union-port Demo?
      • Shows single port for all ports with same sort_key
      • Select specific type when adding/showing
      • Only one type should be visible on the module at any time
      • Making tuple parameters union types is probably too complicated
      • Should work with alternate specs like matplotlib (if sort_key is defined correctly)
  • [TE] Feature suggestion: Let connections connect to functions/parameters
    • Show functions and parameters as ports and toggle port visibility directly for functions and parameters
    • Use separate views for ports and functions (like before)
      • Allow rearranging of functions
    • Pros:
      • Supports ordered connections. Create 2 functions, make them visible as ports, make connections to them.
        • We can also have, e.g., a line joining the ports on the module to indicate they are part of a list.
        • Makes List module simpler
      • Connect to parameter in tuple
      • Functions that are visible on the module can connect to an actual function, and not just to the first one it finds.
      • Can replace operation modules (in python-wrapper) in some cases for, e.g., numpy.
    • Cons:
      • Interface more complicated and crowded
      • More difficult for users to grasp?
      • No immediate use case
      • Makes no union type for tuple parameters a bigger problem.
  • [TE] Publish user survey?
    • No response from vistrails release yet
    • Not announced on vistrails-users yet.

May 4, 2016

Updates

  • VisTrails 2.2.4 released

Items to Discuss

April 27, 2016

Updates

Items to Discuss

  • [TE] Wrapping Bokeh
    • New method type "operation"
      • Transforms Figure->Glyph->Output into Glyph->Figure->Output
        • Glyph sets function name and arguments as output
          • Not serializable, but should always be computed together with the subject of the operation.
        • Figure applies Glyph operation on itself
      • Useful for matplotlib?
        • matplotlib currently find actors by searching upstream?
        • But this is more difficult since matplotlib is not function-based.
    • New "union" port type
      • Turns "x(float), x(list)" into "x (float, list)" and uses first set value
        • Uses only first value in tuple
        • Bokeh have many properties that support (list, string, Float)
      • Does not work with depth=1 types (e.g. Float of depth 1)
        • Turn Depth 1 types with known type into lists?
  • [TE] New bugfix release
    • Finalize survey

April 20, 2016

Updates

  • Merged upgrade fixes
    • Now has infinite loop test
    • loop test now correctly loops 5 times
      • remap_module used wrong (current) package version when creating ModuleDescriptor
  • Fixed multi-step group upgrades (PR: #1168)

Items to Discuss

  • New bugfix release
    • Merge usagestats
    • Need to finalize survey

April 13, 2016

Updates

Items to Discuss

  • [TE] Chaining upgrades done (#1164)
    • Replace "Upgrade" description annotation with "upgraded_from" annotation to identify which tags to hide?
  • [TE] Iterating handle_invalid_pipeline (#1165)
    • Not based on chain-upgrades-loop
    • Cherry-pick test to preserve source?
    • Need maxPipelineFixAttempts option?
      • The code is now smarter about recursion, so max attempts will "probably" never be reached.
    • Need debug messages?
      • Would need to be moved into handle_invalid_pipeline

April 6, 2016

Updates

  • [TE] Query View improvements
    • Done except for displaying "Version Info" and #1164
  • [RR] Working on finishing new interpreter (finally!)

Items to Discuss

  • [TE] Chaining upgrades (#1164)
    • Try latest upgrade first, then previous.
    • If all fail, select latest upgrade?

March 30, 2016

Updates

Items to Discuss

  • [TE] Query View improvements
    • Unified do_version_switch and get_upgrades as validate_version()
    • Problems with query view using its own controller
      • Fixed module info not being displayed for query results
      • Still no version info for query results
      • Still an issue with version query view not being updated

March 23, 2016

Updates

Items to Discuss

  • [RR] Usage reporting almost ready to go
    • Need to record whether specific features are used: paramexpore, mashup, query
      • [DK] Record if LaTeX extension is used? But hard to distinguish from direct batch invocation
    • How to record size of vistrail?
      • [DK] IdScope already walks over vistrail, use that
      • but total number of modules and versions doesn't give an idea of average size of individual pipelines

March 16, 2016

Updates

Items to Discuss

  • [TE] Upgrades in Query Mode
    • Now using code similar to do_version_switch
      • Uses handle_invalid_pipeline
      • Differences: Not using current_pipeline, flushes changes
      • New controller method get_pipeline optimized using cached pipelines (but not current_pipeline)
      • Integrate to avoid repeated code?
      • Use this for query mode?
  • [TE] VisTrails 2.2.4 ready for release?
    • tej package updated. Others?
  • [JF] upgrades and the version tree
  • [JF] provenance in Jupyter
  • [DK] bundles: #1092

March 9, 2016

Updates

Items to Discuss

  • [TE] Fixing search mode
    • String query now matches all by default
      • This caused pipeline queries to never match
    • String query can search: User/Notes/Tagname/Time/Module name
      • Should we search module names by default? (Disabled by default because it is expensive)
      • Fixed notes search
    • '>' parameter queries in documentation but has been removed
    • Fixed module matches for upgraded pipelines (By not upgrading pipeline)
      • Upgrades still a problem
      • Add "Upgrade all menu option?" (Or upgrade all on open when `hideUpgrades`)
      • [JF] Allow search on past tags
  • [TE] Create new bugfix release
    • Finish querying
    • Path issue on windows
  • [DK] Look into sqlalchemy and new bundle branches

March 2, 2016

Updates

  • [TE] Fixed cache bug with port specs
  • [TE] VisTrails Next
    • Most packages now work
    • No qgis for Python 3

Items to Discuss

    • Always dereference symlinks? #1146

February 23, 2016

Updates

  • [TE] Fixed PythonSource 100% CPU bug
  • [TE] VisTrails Next
    • Updated NOAA Web Service examples
      • Now uses REST service, tabledata, and Google Maps
      • Web Service replaced with DownloadFile

Items to Discuss

  • [RR] Couple of fixes are in for API, and tej&reprounzip on the Mac binary. Also new release of tej, and working on anonymous usage reports.
    • New 2.2 release soon?
  • [RR] Anonymous usage reports
    • Sends out info like number of modules & versions, packages used, Python & libs versions, execution time, specific features #1154
  • [JF] Bring in noWorkflow to track variable dependencies, for the considered Jupyter integration?
  • noWorkflow - provenance for python scripts
    • Recent work on tracking dependencies
  • Also integrates ReproZip with Jupyter
    • mybinder
      • Use with ReproZip to automatically build Jupyter notebook interfaces
  • Daves comments on Jupyter integration
    • It is possible to identify cell order on the server side
    • Not trivial to track order of cells on client side
  • How does Galaxy workflows relate to VisTrails?
    • Packaging in Galaxy is hard
    • Galaxy for biomedical workflows, difficulty making it general
  • Action items
    • How difficult to track cell dependencies in Jupyter notebooks?
    • Use noWorkflow to track cell dependencies?
    • How difficult to modify mybinder to use ReproZip packages?

February 17, 2016

Updates

Items to Discuss

  • [TE] Fixed Group memory usage
    • Modules in groups are supposed to be freed when done executing
      • Prevented by logger that stored references to the modules (fixed, now using id(module))
      • Prevented by list iterator bug that stored list of modules on the 'self' port bug (fixed)
  • [TE] VisTrails Next
    • Removed deprecated code
      • Core imports that should be gui imports
      • GetInputFromPort etc.
        • PythonSources will be upgraded
      • Fixes for Python < 3
      • fixes for VTK < 6
    • TODOs
      • Remove RemoteQ
        • Port Hadoop to tej (Already have pbs)
      • Merge package wrapper
      • Finish SQLAlchemy branch
      • Finish new bundle branch
    • [JF] Will contact Jeff and Matthias about moving to Python 3
  • [JF] Query by Example is broken
  • [JF] VisTrails Data Cleaning Project
    • Use VisTrails to process and explore task-specific data while keeping provenance.
    • Remi's Idea
      • Use VisTrails as the backend in a Jupyter notebook
      • Overcome problems with executing cells in random order
        • Interesting research topic, but little interest has yet been noted
      • Interesting to study how such a notebook would be used (Is there notebook usage data available?)
      • Impose restrictions to notebook cell boundaries
      • It will only work for functional operations
      • Can we fix, or detect, non-functional (mutating) operations?
      • Analyse code and data flow and see if it mutates data in unexpected ways?
      • Mutable operations can be created in many ways in Python
  • Next meeting Tuesday 11:30

February 10, 2016

Updates

Items to Discuss

  • VisTrails Next
    • Test suite passes
      • Python 3 less deterministic, module upgrade order random.
    • [RR] updating packages: Reprounzip (pushed), tej, persistent_archive, ...
    • All of our packages should run fine :)
    • VTK thumbnail comparison works
      • Rendering bug on some systems
        • QVTKCell now inherits QGLWidget
      • Old thumbnails had wrong height due to spreadsheetwindow being too small
        • Fixed by regenerating thumbnails
      • Silenced deprecation messages when generating modules
      • Many new classes in VTK 7
    • Remove deprecated code
      • Core imports that should be gui imports
      • GetInputFromPort etc.
        • Will break existing PythonSources
        • Try to upgrade?
      • Old-style packages
        • Or only allow a new style, like __init__.py renamed to info.py? (merge with identifiers.py?)
          • Read info.py without importing package?
      • Fixes for Python < 3
      • Fixes for Qt < 5
      • fixes for VTK < 7
      • Remove self port?

February 3, 2016

Updates

Items to Discuss

  • VisTrails Next
    • All tests but thumbnail comparison passes
    • Still issues with gui and more packages needs to be tested
    • PythonSource and MplSource upgraded with lib2to3
    • Keep contrib packages? Update?
    • VTK 7 is released
      • Supports Python 3
      • Will hopefully get into conda and others soon
      • Deprecates a bunch of modules
  • Travis builder for VisTrails Next
    • Runs!
    • Uses conda
      • Many levels of requirements
        • apt packages
        • conda packages
        • python packages in requirements.txt
        • python packages in setup.py
      • Can probably drop conda. Default builder does not have Qt5, but beta builder do!
      • But useful if we want to use conda in our own build process.
    • Lots of errors I do not get locally?
  • User Survey
    • Have you used any alternatives to vistrails?
      • Relevant? More options?
    • How often do you use any of these particular features in VisTrails?
      • Add/Remove alternatives?
    • How important would you rank the following potential improvements to VisTrails?
      • Add alternatives?

January 27, 2016

Updates

  • New interpreter
    • Working prototype soon
    • Looping not completely done (and port combination mode: pairwise/cartesian...)
    • Need to integrate with VisTrails
      • Compatibility with existing modules
      • Use log controller
      • Want to cache at multiple levels (whole stream/single element of stream)
      • Non-runtime attributes of modules (cache check, automatic conversion check, constant from/to string)

Items to Discuss

  • User Survey
  • ZMQ failing on windows (vistrails-users)
  • [TE] Python 3 branch
    • Testsuite almost passes
      • Failing are unicode filenames, some users guide examples, and thumbnail comparisons.
    • Fixed issues
      • Signatures are now bytes (convert to string to show in widget)
      • Cannot compare different types, e.g., (None < 1)
        • PortSpec.depth and min/maxConn could be None. (Backport!)
        • cell.row could be None
      • Lots of unicode/bytes fixes to serializations
        • We have encryption implementations in the code! (keychain)
      • Lots of small fixes to package method differences
    • Current issues
      • logging widget empty?
      • version tree signals messed up
      • provenance view legend icons black
      • Text do not fit in some widgets
      • VTK thumbnail comparison fails
        • VTK Cells have some faces in wrong direction?
        • Because running in VM?
    • Installing on Ubuntu LTS/Latest Mint
      • Install latest matplotlib from pip
      • Install VTK 7.0.0rc2 from source
      • No QtWebEngine binary (controversial) (Must install sip/PyQt5/Qt5 from source)

January 20, 2016

Updates

Items to Discuss

  • [TE] Backporting features from Python 3 + PyQt5 + Qt5
    • Merged unicode with master (unicode)
      • One unicode test failing
      • Problem saving to xml
    • Used python-future to run futurize stage 1 to update legacy (pre 2.6) code (unicode-futurized)
      • Updates print to functions 'from __future__ import print_function'
      • Updates exception calls to use 'as'
      • removes most usages of 'long' (mostly used unnecessarily)
        • Only needed for 32-bit support
      • Fixes relative imports (from __future__ import absolute_import)
    • Fixing code that is deprecated in Qt 4.8 and removed in Qt 5 (unicode-futurized-qt5)
      • Updated all signals to new-style
  • If we go 2 to 3, this could break packages
    • means we should schedule any package format changes for the same time
    • e.g., imports should be unrelated to code path (function to load module from package identifier?) (take them out of vistrails.* #1002)
    • any structural changes (e.g. the __init__ versus init thing) (RR thinks it makes sense, though having both named "init" is unfortunate)
    • putting package identifier as xml?
      • Python not so bad, plus some stuff in there is Python code (checking dependencies)
    • version the APIs?
      • RR planning on versioning vistrails_module.Module, no point versioning the whole package?
  • file formats on 2 to 3:
    • no real translation/upgrade, but non-ascii values that work on 3 won't load in 2

January 13, 2016

Updates

Items to Discuss

January 6, 2016

Updates Items to Discuss

  • Updating VisTrails dependencies
    • Successfully built Win7-64/Python3/PyQt5/Qt5/WebEngine/VTK7
      • VTK 7 is the first supporting Python 3 but is only in release candidate phase.
        • Next version of VTK 6 is rumored to support Python 3
        • There is a development branch of VTK 6 supporting Python 3
      • Can travis build this?
        • We can skip tests for WebEngine and VTK if needed
    • Python 3 showstoppers
      • No MySQL-python (sqlalchemy supports mysql through other drivers)
      • No suds (there are active forks but we could also drop support?)
  • Options for python2/3 support:
    • Interpreter could be python2/python3 based on packages
    • six layer works but not the easiest to maintain (e.g. in reprozip)
  • Drop support for win-64
  • Update copyright headers to 2016

Older meetings

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