Porting CLEO software to Linux
Valentin Kuznetsov, CHRIS D. JONES · CERN Document Server (European Organization for Nuclear Research) · 2005
The Linux operating system has become the platform of choice in the HEP community.However, the migration process from another operating system to Linux can be a tremendous effort for developers and system administrators.The ultimate goal of such a transition is to maximize agreement between the final results of identical calculations on the different platforms.Apart from the fine tuning of the existing software, the following issues need to be resolved: choice of Linux distribution, development tools (compiler, debugger, profilers etc.), compatibility with third-party software, and deployment strategy.It would be ideal to develop, run and test software using office desktops, local farm systems, or personal laptops regardless of the Linux distribution choosen.To accomplish this task, you need to have a flexible package management system that is able to install/upgrade/verify/uninstall the necessary software components without particular knowledge of remote system configuration and user privileges.We discuss how Linux became the third official computing platform of the CLEO collaboration, outlining the details of the transition from Tru64 and Solaris operating systems to Linux, and the software model and deployment strategy employed.