[IPOL discuss] meeting notes

[Nicolas Limare]

We talked for 4 hours yesterday, here are some brief notes i kept from
the meeting.

Who?  Pascal Monasse, Migiel Colom, Enric Meinhardt-Llopis, Rafael
      Grompone, Gabriele Facciolo, Nicolas Limare
When? Wednesday May 18, 2:00 pm


# next development server
#########################

The network between Europe and Uruguay may be a problem, but it's
difficult to estimate it before we are plugged there. We have no other
hosting solution, so the consensus is that we should try to host the
machine in Montevideo. If the network issue is worse than expected,
the cost of our test will be the cost of getting the machine back in
France.

# server administration
#######################

Gabriele and Enric will join the admin group, with Nicolas, Jose-Luis
and Pascal G..

# source of web pages
#####################

Anyone with an username/password to access https://edit.ipol.im/ get
the whole source (markdown files, images, ...) of the web site:

* you can download a (big) tar/gz archive of the whoiole site from the
  the "snapshot" link on
  https://edit.ipol.im/history?p=www.ipol.im;a=tree
* you can download an archive from a subfolder by browsing the source
  tree and chosing a "snapshot", for example on
  https://edit.ipol.im/history?p=www.ipol.im;a=tree;f=pub/algo
* you can get the whole source and hostory with git by
    git clone https://edit.ipol.im/git/www.ipol.im/  

# external tools
################

There was a discussion about the possibility to use external tools
(such as shell pipes, grep, cut, ...) in the demos and in the
published code. The general consensus after the discussion is that
some scripts and tools can be used with a published code, for example
to glue together different programs, but only if it keeps simple and
if it is also possible to use the code without these scripts and
tools.

We want portable implementations, usable out of the UNIX world. But
such tools can be included with the code as "extra material", like the
matlab interfaces already included with some codes.

In the demo environment, Nicolas will add another method to
explicitely call external programs and shell scripts (without
overrriding the $PATH). This will help the development of some demos,
but should not be used "in production".

# graph output
##############

We agree that many demos will probably need to display some graph data
(line graphs, histograms, ...). To make it easy, the programs should
produce the numeric data in a well-defined format (probably similar to
csv files), and we will have a few simple functions in the demo system
to transform these data files into a graph image. Miguel will propose
the data file format and the graphing functions to be added to the
demo library.

# build format
##############

The "build()" part of the demos is too messy and confusing. Nicolas
has a plan to make it straightforward, by requiring the algorithm
codes to follow a few rules. He will detail this plan on the
mailing-list.

# collection of code fragments
##############################

Many codes reimplement the same things, we would like an easy way to
share these code fragments. We can't and won't build a library because
IPOL contributors are working independently, not like a development
team (and everyone has his own vision of how to handle an image and
there is no reason to change it). But we can expand the list of code
tools currently available on http://www.ipol.im/meta/dev/.

Nicolas will transfer this page and the tools into the wiki. Then when
someone has an useful piece of code, they can polish it and make it
available there for sharing.

# misc. 
#######

* a solution to start a demo from an archive could be interesting
* we have to think about running the demos in an isolated environment
  to avoid bugs used to exploit the server ressources (lxc may be the
  solution: http://lxc.sourceforge.net/)
* the input demo page will have to be more flexible for some demos
  currently in development
* agustin sent a prototype of his "demo generator" we didn't have time
  to test it duroing the meeting, but the best way is to run this demo
  generator on our development server; then everyone can try it and
  provide some feedback
* unifying some demos in a "generic demo model" could help reduce the
  redundancy, but the general feeling was it is too early
* at the end of June, Nicolas will propose a git workshop

--
Nicolas LIMARE - CMLA - ENS Cachan    http://www.cmla.ens-cachan.fr/~limare/
IPOL - image processing on line                          http://www.ipol.im/
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