Implement a plugin-type mechanism for FeynRules models into WHIZARD

[Christian Speckner]

To be able to use the FeynRules? interface in a mundane way, a mechanism for compiling and loading FeynRules?-generated models after compiling and installing WHIZARD is desireable.

[ohl]

On the O'Mega side of things, this has been anticipated and will be provided for by Ticket #104.

[Christian Speckner]

Ticket #104 sounds elegant, but I was thinking about a simpler solution suitable for the 2.0 release by installing the object and header files necessary for out-of-tree compilation of the matrix element compiler and glue code. The interface would then write out a Makefile suitable for compiling and installing the model into a plugin directory, and WHIZARD would dlopen the glue code together with the process library.

[Christian Speckner]

Mostly implemented as of r1971 and r1978 in branches/speckner/feynrules_plugin. WHIZARD already installs all files necessary for out-of-tree compilation, and the necessary .cmi / .cmxa / .a files are now installed in $prefix/lib/omega/caml.

The WHIZARD search paths are extended to

• .mdl files: ~/.whizard/share/whizard/models
• omega binaries: ~/.whizard/bin

Files found there override those installed in the global prefix. In addition, ~/.whizard/lib/whizard/models and $prefix/lib/whizard/models are searched for parameter libraries of the type libparameters_modelname.la (or .a). If found, those libraries are linked into the process library if required (read: if the model is used).

The mechanism works nicely; however, for consistency, I want to extend the extended search paths also to the external model libraries. After doing that and conducting some testing, I'd consider this as ready for merging to the trunk.

N.B.: In order to access the $HOME environment variable, I use get_environment_variable which is a 2003 feature. I have added a corresponding check to configure.

[Christian Speckner]

The extended search paths are completed in r1982 and in r1986, whizard-config and omega-config scripts were added which will be utilized by FeynRules? to obtain the WHIZARD build configuration.

[Christian Speckner]

Fully implemented, tested and merged in r2034. Several adjustments were still necessary, but the mechanism described above hasn't changed anymore. Closing this ticket.

[Juergen Reuter]

Milestone v2.0.0final deleted