Refactoring of python/hpsmc

[sarahgaiser]

Some files in python/hpsmc are getting very large and are therefore hard to read/maintain. Especially tools.py contains a lot of components that are not necessarily connected to each other. I propose breaking down these big files into smaller ones containing one component or a set of related components.

[sarahgaiser]

I started working on this a while ago when I was still familiarizing myself with hps-mc, so we don't have to start from scratch. I will find that branch again and link it to this issue.

[cbravo135]

I think a good example of the scope of a single file is generators.py, which contains all components that call one of the generators we use. One example of something we could break out of tools.py would be specifically the lcio tools we use for various sample preparations. The first step to doing this carefully will be to list out all the components we have and start putting them into categories. Having a different file for each component is going to get messy fast.

[JeremyMcCormick]

Can we discuss this in a meeting sometime?

I agree with you that the existing files could be split up, but I'd like to have a discussion of how this would look. It would have the potential to cause big conflicts on existing branches, so we should probably do this in a "sprint" while we pause most other code development.

[sarahgaiser]

Sounds good to me. Maybe we can discuss the meeting time in software_coordination channel?