HEP Software Foundation Community White Paper Working Group - Software Development, Deployment and Validation

TL;DR

This paper discusses the challenges and best practices in software development, deployment, and validation within the High Energy Physics community, emphasizing sustainability, recognition, and effective collaboration across large, long-term projects.

Contribution

It provides a comprehensive review of current practices and formulates recommendations for improving software development, deployment, and validation in HEP over the next decade.

Findings

Identifies key challenges in HEP software sustainability and collaboration.

Recommends strategies for recognition and citation of software contributions.

Proposes best practices for software validation and deployment.

Abstract

The High Energy Phyiscs community has developed and needs to maintain many tens of millions of lines of code and to integrate effectively the work of thousands of developers across large collaborations. Software needs to be built, validated, and deployed across hundreds of sites. Software also has a lifetime of many years, frequently beyond that of the original developer, it must be developed with sustainability in mind. Adequate recognition of software development as a critical task in the HEP community needs to be fostered and an appropriate publication and citation strategy needs to be developed. As part of the HEP Softare Foundation's Community White Paper process a working group on Software Development, Deployment and Validation was formed to examine all of these issues, identify best practice and to formulare recommendations for the next decade. Its report is presented here.