RootSpy FAQ

1. What is RootSpy?

RootSpy is a C++ software package that allows ROOT histograms to be monitored remotely as they are being filled.

2. Where can I get RootSpy?

See the downloads page.

3. Is RootSpy part of ROOT?

Nope.

4. What operating systems does RootSpy run on?

It has been developed on both Red Hat Linux and Mac OS X. It's been tested on both 32-bit and 64-bit OSes. In principle, it should compile and run on most modern versions of Linux and OSX. It will probably compile on other Unixes using g++.

5. What is required to build RootSpy?

To build RootSpy, you'll need the RootSpy source (obviously), an installation of ROOT version 5.24 or greater, and the cMsg package. cMsg can be downloaded either from the cMsg website or from the downloads page where I try to keep a copy.

6. Does this work with 2-D or 3-D histograms? What about TTrees?

Yes. RootSpy will transfer 2-D and 3-D histograms. It will also transfer TTrees and even includes an option to grab just the last N events of a tree where you can specify the "N". TTrees are still a bit developmental, but so far the testing has worked and you can try it yourself starting with RootSpy-1.3. Keep in mind though that TTrees can take up a lot of memory. Multiple copies are made during the transfer process so becareful to watch your RAM limits. Also, TTrees are not supported in the RootSpy GUI program, but you can transfer them using either the RSDumpTree tool or the rootspy-client.so plugin that comes with RootSpy.

7. Can I use RootSpy in an interactive Root session?

Yes. As of RootSpy-1.3, you can load the rootspy-client.so plugin from your root session and use it to look for and download histograms and trees. To use it, just load it after building RootSpy:

gSystem->Load("/path/to/rootspy-client.so")

It will tell you how to get more help once it successfully loads.

8. This thing is awesome! Can I give you guys money?

Nope. But we'll take all of the glory you'd care to heap on us.