Concepts

Both Lumberjack and Palisade share some common concepts, which are outlined here.

First, both tools use Python modules for configuration. These must be written by the user following a series of conventions (see below) and placed under python/Lumberjack/cfg/ and python/Palisade/cfg/. A configuration module is also called an analysis, since the configuration it contains is often specific to a single analysis (with different conventions, variable names, binnings, etc.).

Note

The above configuration paths must be importable Python modules. That is, they must either be simple Python files (enough for “small” analyses) or directories containing a file called __init__.py. The organization of each configuration module into files is left to the user. However, all configurations must declare a number of mandatory variables (more details below) and make them available for import at the module level.

Second, both tools provide a way of defining tasks in the configuration modules. The exact meaning of “task” differs slightly between the two, but it can be thought of as a single unit of work in a particular workflow.

Tasks are configured and given a name in the analysis configuration modules and can then be executed via the command-line interfaces provided by both tools: lumberjack.py and palisade.py.