Meeting on December 1, 2008

Agenda

1. Attendance
2. Announce agenda
3. Approve November 17, 2008 Meeting Notes. Ask for review and address any problems seen in the notes.
4. Discuss 4.3.X Roadmap
5. Summary of PECORA17
6. Open questions
7. Summary and closing

Notes

Attendance

• kstreith
• rforehan
• gmartin_cn
• dsulgrov
• raevans
• mconsidi
• tclarke (partial)
• gwelch (partial)

Summary

The previous meeting minutes were reviewed and approved. The roadmap for 4.3.x was discussed.

• The 4.3.x line will break binary compatibility from 4.2.x.
• Initial implementation will be in trunk/future. When the 4.3.x line goes binary compatible it will reside in trunk/4.3.X. This will occur in late January or early February of 2009
• The Ext classes will be collapsed into their base classes. This will break binary and source compatibility but will retain functional compatibility.
• Upgrading to Qt 4.4.X from Qt 4.3.X should maintain source compatibility. This will add Qt functionality including a better Qt assistant, WebKit, and a better rendering framework for Qt widgets. Generally, attendees were in favor or had no opinion.
• Upgrade of the hdf4 library was discussed. Should it be integrated into 4.2.X or just future? Attendees seem to prefer just future in order to maintain stability in 4.2.X.
• Upgrading to Visual Studio 2008 was discussed.
  • Pro - Visual Studio 2005 is becoming more difficult to locate (the professional version).
  • Pro - Visual Studio 2008 express is easier to setup than Visual Studio 2005 express.
  • Pro - There are some changes and improvements over 2005.
  • Con - A build of Opticks will work with one or the other. Supporting both requires two builds of Opticks.
  • Con - Some dependencies need to be rebuilt with 2008.
  • Con - There are not many changes to the C++ portion of 2008 vs. 2005.
  • Con - Users of 2005 professional need to purchase 2008 professional. (upgrades of express only require a new download)
• The Visual Studio upgrade does not seem like a clear cut decision. Clear benefits need to exist before upgrading. The plug-in community needs more time to investigate and discuss an upgrade before one occurs. The decision is to stick with 2005 as the default decision but to pose the question to the dev@opticks.ballforge.net mailing list for further discussion.
• All changes in trunk/future need to be discussed by the community at least on Jira and on the mailing list for larger changes.
• Updates to the view system to support view coordinate systems was mentioned as a possible 4.3.X feature.
• Updates to movie rendering to support video streaming was mentioned as a possible 4.3.X feature.

COAN was mentioned as an independent repository for Opticks plug-ins.

A brief summary of the ASPRS fall conference (PECORA 17) was given. There is interest in using Opticks for Landsat8 processing and LIDAR/LADAR processing. There were some interesting algorithms presented. SocetGXP had a big presence and has been marketing their product extensively. Gorilla marketing of Opticks was mentioned as a good way to keep up. Two other ways of marketing Opticks were discussed. Sponsoring a Google Summer of Code intern will be discussed at the next meeting. A COAN sponsored contest will begin soon. The contest will run for two to three months and will have a great prize. The contest needs to be marketed outside the normal Opticks community. (on Slashdot for example) Watch dev@opticks.ballforge.net for details.

Decisions

Logs

	***	Opened channel log for #opticks at 12/1/2008 2:02:59 PM
14:03	***	Private CTCP VERSION from freenode-connect:
14:03	***	You need a registered nick to join: #osgeo
14:03	***	You need a registered nick to join: #ossimplanet
14:03	kstreith	logging is now enabled
14:03	kstreith	let's start the Dec 1st IRC meeting
14:03	kstreith	let's start with attendance, please respond if you are here for the meeting, so I know who is idle and who is in attendance
14:03	rforehan	Here
14:03	gmartin_cn	Here
14:03	dsulgrov	here
14:03	raevans	Here
14:03	mconsidi	Here
14:04	kstreith	why were waiting for responses from a couple of others, here is a summary of the agenda
14:05	kstreith	1. Attendance
14:05	kstreith	2. Announce Agenda
14:05	kstreith	3. Approve Nov 17, 2008 meeting notes
14:05	kstreith	4. Discuss 4.3.X Roadmap
14:05	kstreith	5. Summary of PECORA17
14:05	kstreith	6. Open Questions
14:05	kstreith	7. Summary and closing
14:05	goffena	here
14:06	kstreith	i am now considering attendance closed, since we are moving onto approval of Nov 17, 2008 notes
14:06	kstreith	here is a link to the meeting notes: https://opticks.balldayton.com/cometwiki/17Nov2008
14:06	kstreith	i leave the floor open for 2-3 minutes, so that everyone has a chance to review
14:09	kstreith	i'm considering the meeting minutes approved, since I have not heard otherwise
14:10	kstreith	moving onto discussion of 4.3.X Roadmap
14:10	kstreith	this week, we will be branching trunk/future from trunk/4.2.X
14:10	kstreith	trunk/future is the location that any and all binary breaking changes are allowed to be made.
14:11	kstreith	the current plan is to branch trunk/4.3.X from trunk/future in the late january/early february timeframe
14:12	kstreith	after this point, all binary breaking changes for 4.3.X will need to have been completed and only binary compatible changes will be possible for 4.3.X.
14:12	kstreith	the purpose of this discussion is to talk what changes should go into 4.3.X
14:13	kstreith	the first and most obvious is to collapse all of the Extension classes (i.e. Ext1, Ext2) into the core interface.
14:13	kstreith	this change will be both source breaking and binary breaking
14:13	kstreith	it will however be functionally compatible
14:14	kstreith	the other thing I'd like to discuss is upgrading from Qt 4.3.X to Qt 4.4.X
14:14	kstreith	that will be binary breaking, but probably source compatible given previous Qt history
14:15	kstreith	I'd like to upgrade because there are some features in 4.4.X, mainly Qt Assistant, QtWebKit, new rendering engine that could be of use to Opticks
14:15	kstreith	in addition, it's always good to stay fairly current with the Qt releases and this is one of the few opportunities to do so.
14:15	kstreith	thoughts?
14:16	dsulgrov	I am in favor of the upgrade
14:17	kstreith	do others have any ideas for 4.3.X?
14:18	rforehan	So trunk/4.3.X will be binary breaking until trunk/future is created at which point further changes to 4.3.X will be binary compat?
14:18	kstreith	no
14:18	kstreith	a trunk that has a VERSION.VERSION.X must always be binary compatible
14:18	kstreith	and trunk/future is the only trunk that is allowed to contain binary breaking changes
14:19	kstreith	we will be updating trunk/future from our current binary compat line 4.2.X this week
14:19	rforehan	But 4.3.X will be split from future after some binary breaking changes have been made?
14:20	kstreith	and then we will take what we have in trunk/future in the late Jan/early Feb timeframe and create a trunk/4.3.X containing the latest in trunk/future at that point
14:20	kstreith	once we make trunk/4.3.X any changes made in trunk/future after that point are by definition destined for a trunk/4.4.X
14:21	mconsidi	Hdf 4.2r3 needs to be included in both trunks. All Hdf changes are binary compat with Hdf 4.2r1, the current version.
14:21	rforehan	Bottom light - plug-ins compiled under 4.2.X may not be usable with 4.3.X
14:21	rforehan	light->line
14:21	kstreith	rforehand: correct
14:22	kstreith	mconsidi: when you say both trunks, what do you mean?
14:22	mconsidi	Don't we want it in 4.2.4
14:23	kstreith	that seems risky for the last 4.2.X release
14:23	kstreith	IMHO
14:23	mconsidi	OK.
14:23	kstreith	mconsidi: explain the benefit of upgrading Hdf4
14:24	mconsidi	In addition to bug fixes, the new version supports 64-bit on windows.
14:25	kstreith	that sounds like a good 4.3.X change
14:25	mconsidi	I think so.
14:25	kstreith	does anyone else have any other ideas?
14:26	dsulgrov	if we are discussing upgrades, should we consider upgrading the Visual Studio compiler?
14:26	kstreith	we should at least discuss it
14:26	kstreith	does anyone have a list of pros?
14:28	kstreith	ok, i have two pros to upgrading Visual Studio
14:28	kstreith	1 - it is slowly becoming harder to find vs 2005 and uprading to 2008 will eliminate that problem
14:28	dsulgrov	we could either support both versions of the compiler or no longer support the 2005 version
14:29	kstreith	2 - vs 2008 express is much easier to setup than vs 2005 express, which would make other open source developers much happier
14:29	kstreith	i would argue against supporting both
14:30	mconsidi	What about third party builds? Will there be problems with Ossim, Hdf and others?
14:30	kstreith	since that would require 4 windows installers (32-bit VS 2005, 64-bit VS 2005, 32-bit VS 2008, 64-bit 2008)
14:30	kstreith	and would unnecessarily confuse end-users
14:31	kstreith	mconsidi: i don't think ms made large changes to the compiler, so yes we would need to recompile all of our dependencies for vs 2008
14:31	kstreith	but I believe it would be pretty straightforward
14:32	mconsidi	Are there any major reasons not to upgrade?
14:32	kstreith	the largest con to switching IMHO is that we don't get much out of it (see my earlier comment about not a lot of changes to the compiler)
14:33	kstreith	but we in effect force everyone to get a new copy of visual studio
14:33	kstreith	for those that are doing open-source development that's easy (just download vs 2008 express)
14:33	kstreith	for those doing closed source development, they all have to buy new licenses for vs 2008
14:35	kstreith	it seems to me that the decision of which way to go isn't very clear cut
14:36	kstreith	and I think it does a dis-service to the plug-in development community to make a change of this magnitude if the reasoning isn't very obvious and very clear cut
14:37	kstreith	so, I'd recommend we leave it a vs 2005 for 4.3.X and hopefully whenever we get around to 4.4.X, ms has done something to make the decision much easier for us (like for example implementing TR1 of the C++ specification or implementing parts of C++ 0x)
14:37	dsulgrov	that depends in part on the timeline for post-4.3.X work (4.4.X or 5.X)
14:38	mconsidi	Why don't we post the question on the mailing list and see what the development community thinks?
14:39	kstreith	sure
14:40	kstreith	IMHO, any thing that goes into trunk/future that will break either source, binary or functional compatibility as compared to 4.2.X needs to be mentioned and discussed on the mailing list.
14:40	mconsidi	I agree.
14:41	kstreith	because ultimately we are trying to make 4.3.X better for plug-in developers while asking them to work through some growing pains
14:41	kstreith	and I think we need buy-in for that to be successful
14:41	kstreith	anyone have any other ideas for 4.3.X?
14:42	gmartin_cn	Community question - is there some sort of 'clearing house' for publicizing plug-ins that folks write that others might find useful?
14:43	kstreith	gmartin_cn: a little off-topic, but yes, there is COAN ( http://coan.wiki.sourceforge.net/ )
14:44	*	tclarke is now present
14:44	kstreith	any other ideas for 4.3.X, i'll leave it open for 2-3 minutes before I move to the next agenda item
14:44	gmartin_cn	Sorry - was referring to previous topic - I'll check out COAN. Thanks
14:46	tclarke	I think we need to make updates to the view system to better handle view based geocoordinates
14:46	tclarke	and we need to improve video capability to handle "streaming" (don't know the number of frames ahead of time)
14:47	kstreith	tclarke: those both seem very interesting
14:47	kstreith	obviously more details are always good
14:47	***	gwelch (n=gwelch@12.188.157.129) has joined #opticks
14:47	kstreith	and there's the question of whether those can make it time-wise into 4.3.X
14:49	tclarke	not sure yet...we havn't generated LOEs for them yet
14:50	***	rforehand (n=rforehan@65.78.181.16) has joined #opticks
14:50	kstreith	in the interest of time, i'd like to move onto the next agenda item
14:50	kstreith	5. Summary of PECORA17
14:50	rforehand	I'm back from the netherlands
14:50	tclarke	some of these issues are in JIRA and can be tracked there
14:50	tclarke	ok, let's move on
14:50	kstreith	that was tclarke's agenda item, so go tclarke
14:51	tclarke	I attended the ASPRS fall conference a couple of weeks ago which this year was the PECORA 17 conference (PECORA occurs once every three years)
14:51	tclarke	I'll give a very general summary and mention a couple of interesting parts
14:52	***	rforehan (n=rforehan@65.78.181.16) has quit IRC [Read error: 110 (Connection timed out)]
14:52	tclarke	the focus this year was landsat and the open landsat archives as well as LDCM (i.e. Landsat8)
14:53	tclarke	there was also a large section on UASs but that primarily focused on hardware platforms and regulations affecting UASs and not so much on data exploitation of exitsting platforms
14:53	tclarke	there was general interest in Opticks all around but especially from the OLI (landsat8 sensor) group
14:54	tclarke	they are looking for exploitation softeware and opticks seems to fit the bill...they will likely need to algortithms developed but are going to investigate Opticks as a plotform for development
14:54	tclarke	there was also some interest from the LIDAR/LADAR community based on a LIDAR demo I gave (the initial LAS importer is available in COAN)
14:55	tclarke	there were a couple of presentations on co-registration and change detection which were quite interesting...I'd love to see implementations in Opticks
14:55	tclarke	one co-registered using a modification of the drizzle algorithm developed for Hubble
14:56	tclarke	the other used video data (or time separated satelite data) to build a 3-D probability model of a "scene" and used that to track vehicles in the scene
14:56	tclarke	I though it would be interesting to get some video and MSI/HSI data from a UAV, generate a 3-D model from the video, and drape the spectral data
14:57	tclarke	as for competition to Opticks, as usual Socet spent a lot of marketing money and had a huge presence
14:57	tclarke	which shows that we need to rev up the gorilla marketing for Opticks
14:58	tclarke	I'm thinking that we need to sponsor a Google Summer of Code student next year
14:58	tclarke	thoughts?
14:58	tclarke	also, COAN will be sponsoring a plug-in writing contest soon
14:58	tclarke	we are working out the details of the rules
14:59	tclarke	but it will likely be 2 or 3 months to write a "cool and usefull" Opticks plug-in
14:59	kstreith	pecora17 sounded very fruitful
14:59	tclarke	and the prize will be super-tool
14:59	tclarke	tool=cool
14:59	tclarke	sorry
14:59	kstreith	i'm open to giving Google Summer of Code a whirl
15:00	kstreith	we can put that on the agenda for next IRC meeting
15:00	tclarke	I think this could be a huge marketing tool...we'll need to advertise outside the normal areas to get general programmers interested (maybe Slashdot, etc.)
15:00	tclarke	ok, we'll discuss SOC next time
15:00	tclarke	watch the mailing list for details on the contest
15:00	kstreith	now, onto the open discussion part of the meeting
15:03	kstreith	ok, closing open discussion now
15:04	kstreith	the meeting is now adjourned
15:04	kstreith	thanks all for attending and contributing
15:05	kstreith	logging is now off
	***	Closed channel log for #opticks at 12/1/2008 3:05:12 PM