[Rivet] HepMC releases

[Alberto Ribon]

 Hello,

 giving the central role that HepMC is playing in the 
 simulation of the LHC experiments, I would like to 
 propose some changes in the way HepMC will be released,
 aimed to improve its consistency between the different
 needs and requests of all its users.

 The idea is to call from time to time, hopefully only once
 or twice per year, depending on the user requests on HepMC,
 a LCG Generator Services monthly meeting dedicated to discuss
 in detail the technical issues and the proposed changes to
 address them in a new release.
 (I am not considering here pure bug fixes, which should be 
  released quickly.)

 These issues and proposed solutions will be circulated well
 before the meeting, to give the users the possibility to
 evaluate them and eventually propose alternative solutions.
 During the meeting the various possibilities will be thoroughly
 discussed, and hopefully an agreement will be found.
 Minutes will be circulated after the meeting, with the
 agreed actions to be taken. People who will not be able to
 attend the meeting will have anyhow a chance to comment and
 share their viewpoints.
 At the end of this process, if a clear consensus on what 
 should be changed in HepMC will emerge, then Lynn will
 make a new release based on those agreed changes.

 Given that already some technical issues on HepMC have been
 risen in the last few weeks, I propose to call the first of
 these special meetings on Wednesday 5th of March, at 16:30 CET.

 Of course, in this first meeting we can discuss not only
 specific HepMC issues, but also the proposed new way to 
 handle future HepMC releases.

 Comments and suggestions are welcome.

 Best regards,
               Alberto