The Pierre Auger Observatory Offline Software

Abstract

The Pierre Auger Observatory aims to discover the nature and origins of the highest energy cosmic rays. The large number of physicists involved in the project and the diversity of simulation and reconstruction tasks pose a challenge for the offline analysis software, not unlike the challenges confronting software for very large high energy physics experiments. Previously we have reported on the design and implementation of a general purpose but relatively lightweight framework which allows collaborators to contribute algorithms and sequencing instructions to build up the variety of applications they require. In this report, we update the status of this work and describe some of the successes and difficulties encountered over the last few years of use. We explain the machinery used to manage user contributions, to organize the abundance of configuration files, to facilitate multi-format file handling, and to provide access to event and time-dependent detector information residing in various data sources. We also describe the testing procedures used to help maintain stability of the code in the face of a large number of contributions. Foundation classes will also be discussed, including a novel geometry package which allows manipulation of abstract geometrical objects independent of coordinate system choice. © 2008 IOP Publishing Ltd.1193Abraham J et al. [Pierre Auger Collaboration] 2004 Nucl. Instrum. Meth. A 523, 50Ghia, P., Pierre Auger Collaboration (2007) Proc. 30th Intl. Cosmic Ray Conference (ICRC 2007), Merida, Mexico, 3-10 July 2007 Preprint, , arXiv:0706.1212 [astro-phKlages, H., HEAT : Enhancement Telescopes for the Pierre Auger Southern Observatory in Argentina Pierre Auger CollaborationMedina, M., Berisso, M., Allekotte, I., Etchegoyen, A., Tanco, G., Supanitsky, A., (2006) Nucl. Instrum. Meth. A, 566, p. 302AMIGA: A muon detector and infilled array for the Auger Observatory (2007) Proc. 30th Intl. Cosmic Ray Conference (ICRC 2007), Merida, , Etchegoyen A [Pierre Auger Collaboration, Mexico, 3-10 JulyArgirò, S., The offline software framework of the Pierre Auger Observatory (2005), Pierre Auger CollaborationArgiro S et al. 2007 Nucl. Instr. and Meth. A, doi:10.1016/j.nima.2007.07.010 Preprint arXiv:0707.1652 [astro-ph]http://www.w3.org/XMLhttp://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc3986http://www.w3.org/TR/xpathhttp:subversion.tigris.orghttp://www.gnu.org/software/autoconfhttp://www.gnu.org/software/ automakehttp://www.gnu.org/software/libtoolhttp://www.w3.org/XML/SchemaRivest, R., http://www.faqs.org/rfcsPatton, S., Concrete uses of XML in software development and data analysis (2003) Proc. Intl. Conf. on Computing in High-Energy Physics and Nuclear Physics (CHEP 2003), , See for example, La Jolla, California, USA 24-28 MarchSciutto, S., Preprint arXiv:astro-ph/9911331Heck, D., Knapp, J., Capdevielle, J., Schatz, G., Thuow, T., (1998) Report FZKA, , 6019Bergmann, T., (2007) Astropart. Phys, 26, p. 420Drescher, H., Farrar, G., Bleicher, M., Reiter, M., Soff, S., Stoecker, H., (2003) Phys.Rev, D67, p. 116001http://root.cern.chhttp://dev.mysql.comhttp://xml.apache.orgJosuttis, N., (1999) The C++ Standard Library, , see for example, Addison-Wesley, ISBN 0-201-37926-0http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-xmlhttp://cppunit.sourceforge.net/doc/1.8.0http://buildbot.sourceforge.nethttp://www.boost.orghttp://proj-clhep.web.cern.ch/proj-clhephttp://geant4.cern.ch/Agostinelli S et al. 2003 Nucl. Instrum. Meth. A 506, 250http://www.python.orgChudoba, J., Simulations and Offline Data Processing for the Auger Experiment Presented at EGEE User Forum, , http://indico.cern.ch/conferenceDisplay.py?confId=7247, Manchester, UK, 9-11 May 200