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Astronomer and Programmer support

Help

We see help for clients of AIPS++ as being layered. We strongly suggest that each AIPS++ consortium site have a designated contact person who can also provide immediate, in-person advice to both astronomers and programmers on how to use the system. For the next layer of help or for queries from non-consortium sites, there are a couple of possibilities: either set up a special group to provide detailed help, or adopt something similar to the Designated AIP program of the AIPS system whereby such duties are rotated around the active programmers in the Project, perhaps to three at one time, one per 8 hour shift? The latter has a number of attractions: it keeps the programmers in touch with the users, the level of advice is high, and it spreads a difficult and demanding job amongst a group of people. The downside is that it takes some fraction of the time of the best people. Overall, we prefer the latter approach and recommend that it be adopted.

Education and training

Users workshops: For the first few years of operation of AIPS++, it will be important to hold training sessions for astronomical users. This is probably best considered as a responsibility of the consortium partners so that, for example, NRAO would offer a workshop for the users of NRAO telescopes. The role of the AIPS++ Project might be to send core staff to help with those workshops.
Tutorials and demonstrations: Computer-based tutorials and demonstrations are an effective way to train end-users both in concepts of astronomical observing and in AIPS++ data reduction. Computer-based conferencing may also eventually allow effective training to proceed year round, but this needs some investigation.
Developers workshops: Programmers need training at a number of levels: programming in Glish, in C++ using our libraries, adding to our libraries, and finally sub-system development. We envisage that all of these would be covered in annual developers workshops.

Feedback

We see user feedback as coming via a number of mechanisms. Immediate feedback comes via email, phone calls, and bug reports. This feedback and any related replies should be logged in a generally accessible form. Thus for purposes of logging, we will prefer feedback via e-mail. Longer term feedback comes via User Group meetings at which representative clients of AIPS++ can comment on current capabilities and future development priorities.

Library and Contributed code

The code in AIPS++ is organized into a number of conceptually different types of repositories. Admittance of code to these repositories is controlled by a number of different policies. The classes of repositories are:

core libraries: aips, synthesis, dish, vlbi, doc These contain the core library code and documentation of AIPS++. Admittance of code and documentation to one of these directories requires passing our code review process. The AIPS++ Project is responsible for maintaining code in these libraries.
documentation library: doc The core documentation source is kept here. We currently have no policy on admittance to this area. This is a topic that we will have to review, and possibly move to package level documentation package/doc.
consortium libraries: atnf, bima, nfra, nrao These are repositories for consortium site specific code. AIPS++ has no policy on whether these are subject to code-review, but we do demand that coding, documentation and other standards be obeyed. The consortium sites are each responsible for maintenance of this code.
contributed library code: contrib This is a repository for contributed code that is either unsupported or supported by an individual author. A minimal set of code standards probably needs to be enforced e.g. some programmer documentation in our standard format, and some user documentation (if appropriate), optionally in our standard format. We currently have no code in this category.
ad hoc library code: trial This is a way-station repository for code that is in development by consortium programmers and is not yet ready for admittance to a core library. There is no admittance limitation, and the individual programmers are responsible for maintenance.

It is in the interests of AIPS++ that good quality, useful code migrate from the peripheral libraries such as contrib and atnf, bima, nfra, nrao into the core libraries aips, synthesis, dish, vlbi, doc.

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