LCIO

LCIO (Linear Collider I/O) is a persistency framework and event data model for linear collider detector studies. It is intended to be used in both simulation studies and analysis frameworks. Its light weight and portability makes it also suitable for use in detector R&D testbeam applications. It provides a C++ and a Java implementation with a common interface (API) - a Fortran interface to the C++ implementation also exists.

Using a common persistency format and event data model allows to easily share results and compare reconstruction algorithms. LCIO is used by almost all groups involved in linear collider detector studies and thus has become a de facto standard.

In particular it is used in the iLCSoft framework and in org.lcsim.

Releases

Release version 2.00

The current version of LCIO is available via SVN checkout (v02-00). Please refer to the users manual on how to get and build LCIO.
Or browse the complete documetation here.
New features in this release (wrt v01-60) :

v02-00

• added multiple TrackStates to Track
• Track::getTrackState(int location) returns one of AtIP, AtFirstHit, AtLastHit, AtCalorimeter, AtVertex, AtOther
• Track::getTrackState(loat x, float y, float z) returns the trackstate closest to the given location
• deprecated Track::isReferecePointPCA()
• added TrackerHitPlane and TrackerHitZCylinder for extending the TrackerHit interface
• added some useful definitions that are used in the ILD software framework, in particular for encoding and decoding cellIDs
• ...

older releases:

• moved code to SVN repository - see http://java.freehep.org/svn/repos/lcio/list/
• new methods in LCReader:
  • LCReader::getNumberOfEvents()
  • LCReader::getNumberOfRuns()
  • LCReader::readRunHeader(int runNumber )
• added spin and color flow information to MCParticle
• added cellID0 and cellID1 to TrackerHit and SimTrackerHit
• added optional storing of the position where the energy deposition (step) occurred in SimCalorimeterHit
• added get/setEnergyError to Cluster
• added tool lcio_event_counter for counting events in slcio / stdhep files

• renamed get/setdEdx() in to get/setEDep() in SimTrackerHit and TrackerHit
• added get/setEdepError() in TrackerHit
• added getCovarianceMatrix() for measurement errors of getCharge() and getTime() in TrackerPulse (issue LCIO-72)
• implemented direct access to events through additional records
• binary 'addRandomAccess' can be used to add random access records to existing older files
• new ostream operator<<(T) for LCIO classes in UTIL/Operators.h, e.g.
  

   cout << *((MCParticle*) c->getElementAt(i) )  << endl ; 

• improved cmake support for LCIO developers
• added support for Java builds with Maven

• optionally build a ROOT dictionary for LCIO
• see: ./examples/cpp/rootDict/README for details
• added quality bit field for TrackerHit (issue LCIO-63)
• java/lcio: output directory in split command and Poisson distribution in merge command

• made direct (random) access mode in C++ optional
• bug fixes and improvements in C++ (build procedure, gcc4.x)

• new optional attribute CalorimeterHit::getEnergyError()
• optional linkage agains libdcap for dCache (C++)
• added PIDHandler to UTIL for convenient access to ParticleID objects (C++)
• restructured test programs for C++
• made compatible w/ gcc4.3 (C++)

• optionally set the compression level in LCWriter (C++)
• added event weight (LCEvent.getWeight())
• improved handling of stdhep files (conversion to LCIO)
• bug fixes

v01-08 New features in this release:

• C++ runtime (user) extensions and relations
• new Vertex class
• new Java lcio command line tool
• bug fixes

v01-07: New features in this release:

• optional python binding (J. McCormick) - see README
• C++ utility code for encoding/decoding of cell ids in hit classes (UTIL::CellIDEncoder and UTIL::CellIDDecoder)
• introduced additional pathLength in SimTrackerHit for silicon tracker digitization
• UTIL::LCSplitWriter to split large files in C++
• fixed files size limit (2GB) in SIO C++ implementation

v01-06: This release allows to optionally store the momentum for SimTrackerHits and to skip any number of events when reading an LCIO file. versions.readme for details.
--> Files are downward compatible with v01-05.

v01-05: This release adds new classes for raw tracker data: TrackerRawData, TrackerData and TrackerPulse. A number of improvements and bug fixes have been introduced. Some trivial changes might be necessary in user code as the return type of 4-momentum attributes of MCParticle and ReconstructedParticle have been changed to double. Files are downward compatible with v01-04.

v01-04: This release introduces collections that hold subsets of objects in other collections, transient and persistent. Multiple I/O streams are now also supported in C++. LCGenericObjects now also in Java. A small change in subclasses of LCGenericObject is needed (C++ only). Files are downward compatible with v01-03.

v01-03-01: A few bugs have been fixed in this release. No changes in the file format or API. .

v01-03: The new release contains the reconstruction data model, support for user extension classes and relatioships between LCIO objects. Please refer to the manual for a detailed list of changes wrt. v01-00 and an introduction to the data model.

Due to restructuring of the software in some rare cases minor changes to user code might be necessary eventhough we tried to keep the API compatible with v01-00.

v01-00: Eventhough the file format has changed with respect to v00-08 old files can still be read with this new version of LCIO. From now on the file format of LCIO releases will be downward compatible (schema evolution). The API of MCParticle had to be changed in order to allow multiple parents (as used in the fragmentation process by most generators) and an additional simulator status word has been addded.
Please switch to the new version soon.

v00-08: first public release. The file format is incompatible with older (test) releases.

Developer and User Documentation

User Questions and Bug reports

To report a bug in LCIO or request a new feature please go to http://bugs.freehep.org and create a new issue.

Tools and Applications

• Mokka simulation
• Brahms reconstruction - LCIO support under development
• JAS3 provides a plugin to conveniently browse LCIO files

Documents

• Talk given at the CHEP conference 03/25/2003 (pdf)
• Status report for the Miniworkshop at CERN 02/25/2003 (pdf)
• Minutes of Meeting at SLAC (pdf)
• Minutes of Meeting at LLR-Ecole Polytechnique (pdf)
• Considerations on the data model, by Ties Behnke (pdf).
• Simulation output data model: lcio.xml
• Reconstruction output data model (proposal): data.xml
• Design considerations for LCIO (pdf)

Last modified: Fri Sep 23 13:59:49 2011