This is a 'quick-view' table that provides an overview of the work that has been undertaken in response to the most recent (2018) SAT review findings.
| Finding | Description | Actions Taken | Status |
|---|---|---|---|
| F1 | Strategic Plan | A publicly available software long-term plan is available on GitHub. In this format, the community can also provide comments and suggestions that will be considered in the ASC strategic software planning activities. This document will be updated at least annually. | Initial Completion: September 2019 |
| F2 | Existing Functionality and Future Deprecation Decisions | Maintaining existing versions of the software past the time when new versions are introduced is standard practice, and past versions of ISIS are maintained and available for download through GitHub. Ensuring that existing functionality is not deprecated unless alternate solutions are common, broadly accessible, and equally capable is also standard practice. We include such information in the ISIS release notes and maintain both applications for a specified period of time (typically 6 months). | ASC is working with the ISIS TC to define a sustainable Long-Term Support (LTS) strategy. |
| F3 | User base for ASC tools | The SAT has recommended that the ASC should continue to focus ISIS development on “experienced technical users comfortable in non-graphical environments,” and we interpret this set of users to primarily include a broad group of those generating higher order data products (e.g., controlled mosaics), those using the ISIS API to develop tools or custom software, and mission teams (e.g., sensor models and data processing pipelines). We agree with this recommendation, and plan to tailor our software development efforts towards functionality applicable to these groups. | Ongoing |
| F4 | Open Source, Community-Driven Development Model | We have made significant strides to actively facilitate broad participation in ISIS software development by external contributors through initiating and Open source community surrounding the ASC software portfolio. | Ongoing |
| F5 | Community and User Support Forum | The following communication platforms are available for engagement with users: 1) AstroDiscuss; 2) Git Issues; 3) Git Project; 4) Gitter; 5) Request for Comment (RFC). | Completed: February 2019 |
| F6 | Task-based Workflow Tutorials | All ASC-developed tutorials and workshop materials are available on the ISIS Wiki under Training. We have also imported previous tips, discussions, and user questions to AstroDiscuss. In addition, as we are developing our code bases, we are continuing to focus on both the quality of new documentation and making improvements to existing documentation. Given the scope of work performed by ASC, this finding is also tractably addressed by engaging the existing community of users to collectively improve the documentation that we all depend upon. Therefore, we will also continue to reduce the burden of change submissions and actively engage all users to submit improvements to our documentation. | Completed: March 2019 |
| F7 | ISIS on Windows Subsystem for Linux | ISIS can now be installed and used within the Windows 10 environment, and documentation regarding this functionality is available. However, this installation method being not strongly supported (i.e., not part of CI testing). | No currently planned actions: September 2020 |
| F8 | Code Modularity | A 5-year modularization plan will be available on GitHub, and community comment and engagement are strongly encouraged. This modularization plan will describe a series of milestones for accomplishing this effort. Details to achieve each milestone will be determined when that effort begins and made available for comment by the planetary community via a Request for Comment. | Ongoing |
| F9 | Code Accessibility | The ASC intends to continue to develop all major non-proprietary software projects through GitHub and within this Open Source community. | Ongoing |
| F10 | Issue Tracking | All non-proprietary Redmine tickets have been transferred to the GitIssues. New Issues can be posted in the appropriate GitHub repository to request bug fixes or new features. | Completed: February 2019 |
| F11 | Software Development Standards | The ASC has a published style-guide, Guidelines for contributing to the ASC software portfolio, and a Code of Conduct to facilitate the growth of an Open Source community surrounding the ASC software portfolio and to encourage a welcoming environment with inclusive and diverse participation. | Completed: November 2018 |
| F12 | Universal Binary | With the release of ISIS 3.6.0 and the use of a conda-based distribution system, ISIS is built and distributed using a more universal binary. We will continue to make improvements to the ISIS build and distribution systems to ensure that installation dependencies on the host system are minimized. | Completed: November 2018 |
| F13 | Binary Installation | The transition to a conda-only installation process allows ISIS to be more easily installed by all users, and this change is in direct response to community feedback regarding the difficulty in building and/or installing ISIS. Mission teams or other funded projects retain the ability to fund a custom ISIS release. | Completed: November 2018 |
| F14 | Development Builds | The ISIS release schedule communicates how new features and bug fixes will be distributed to the community on a stable and regular cadence. Our current release plan includes quarterly releases and up to three bug fix releases (on an as needed basis) between each quarterly release (up to 12 bug fix releases annually). Under the current build environment, weekly ISIS builds are no longer created. Nightly builds are no longer generated for public distribution, as they are used to allow for overnight testing to run and for developers to assess the impact of the previous day’s code changes (made through merged PRs). | Completed: November 2018 |
| F15 | Software Compilation | The use of a standard CMake build system and the cross-platform anaconda dependency management tooling significantly simplifies the compilation of ISIS for all users. The ASC agrees that the availability of appropriate test data is needed to facilitate external developers to build and test the ISIS system. Improving our testing capability is a long-term effort, and we are actively and systematically addressing this concern by adopting a testing framework, working to refactor and improve tests while reducing overall test volumes, and exploring options for version controlled large file storage and transmission support for test data, where appropriate. | Ongoing |
| F16 | Software Optimization | The ASC strives to continuously identify ways in which we can improve software performance. We value community feedback regarding the applications where optimization would be most beneficial to the community. | Ongoing |
| F17 | Support for Active Missions | The ASC will continue to support active missions by continuing to improve the responsiveness that ASC can offer those active teams, advocating for early involvement and consistent communication with mission and instrument teams to help to maintain this support, offering to provide mission teams a technical contact role between ASC and the team, and continuing to clearly communicate to missions scheduling and other resource constraints that allow both parties to plan and adequately budget for mission support. | Ongoing |
| F18 | Support for Small and Irregular Bodies | The ASC continues to leverage interactions with active flight missions to make targeted improvements to ISIS to support small bodies. These include, but are not limited to, support for bundle adjustment in cartesian coordinates, support for multi-part DSK files, and improved ray tracing for complex viewing conditions with occlusion. The ASC will continue to develop support for small, irregular bodies as a key component of our software package through a combination of internally funded software development, open source contribution by the community, and collaboration with the community. | Ongoing |
| F19 | Automated Image Matching and Feature Recognition | The ASC will continue the development of improved automated matching capabilities within our software portfolio and will seek to provide documentation that is helpful to the technical user. | Ongoing |
| F20 | Broadening the SPICE Web Service | The ASC continues to actively address SPICE modularization in the ISIS code base, but we do not plan to make alterations to the calibration applications in the near term. This finding highlights an opportunity for community contribution to the ISIS code base, and the ASC is committed to supporting these community efforts. | FY21 Work Planned for Calibration Routines |
| F21 | Python Application Programming Interface | The ASC agrees that an API to the ISIS library written in a dynamic language would be invaluable, but caution that the immediate exposure of an API would likely not satisfy the majority of ISIS users. Additional input is needed to determine how such an API would be most often used by the community. | Ongoing |
| F22 | Software Management Leadership | The ASC has put in place a new management structure that includes both a Software Development Lead (currently Jay Laura / jlaura@usgs.gov / @jlaura) and a Technical Operations Lead (currently Robin Fergason / rfergason@usgs.gov / @rfergason). | Completed: October 2018 |
| F23 | Workload | The ASC software portfolio is Open Source and the work proposed is inline with that capacity. | Completed: March 2019 |
| F24 | Continued Funding for Support and Maintenance | The ASC has dedicated funding through our NASA-funded software portfolio to support bug fixes and feature enhancements requested by the community through GitHub Issues. In addition, we also dedicate effort toward specific, larger efforts related to support and maintenance (e.g., improving our release system and making test data more easily available) that make code submission by external contributors less burdensome. | Completed ASC responsibility through communication with NASA HQ: July 2019 |
| F25 | External Review of ASC Funding Requests | The ASC is inviting external feedback by the community at many different levels in the process, as we believe that community input is extremely valuable. The ASC is actively seeking to engage users and are more transparent in our communication regarding software direction through 1) making our software long-term plan publicly available for comment; 2) standing up a Technical Steering Committee; and 3) initiating a Request for Comment (RFC) to describe proposed changes to the ASC code base to encourage broad community comment and engagement. | Completed ASC responsibility through communication with NASA HQ: July 2019 |