The CERN Tape Archive open source tape data management software.
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The CERN Tape Archive (CTA) is the storage system for the custodial copy of all physics data at CERN. CTA was designed to cope with the huge storage and performance demands of LHC Run-3 and beyond.
CTA is:
- The leading Free and Open Source tape data management software
- Home to all the experimental physics data at CERN
- Scalable, for small and large installations
- Self-hostable, on-premise
CTA is designed to operate on physical tape infrastructure and is used in combination with a disk buffer system such as EOS or dCache. For development purposes it is also possible to run a containerized setup of the CTA components. For this, you can have a look at the Development documentation.
- Request access to work on the CTA repository or create a fork.
- Set up a development environment.
- Choose or create an issue to work on.
- Create a branch on the CTA repository.
- Make your changes on this branch (see Coding Conventions).
- Open a merge request from your branch into
main. - Ensure all necessary checks pass and assign/request a reviewer.
- Wait for your work to be reviewed and eventually merged.
For more details, see the Developer Documentation.
CTA is licensed under GPL Version 3 and uses SPDX identifiers for machine-readable licensing information. All files must therefore include an SPDX header at the top of the file:
SPDX-FileCopyrightText: <year of creation> CERN
SPDX-License-Identifier: GPL-3.0-or-later
External contributors are encouraged to add their own SPDX-FileCopyrightText line for new files or significant contributions. Files may therefore contain multiple copyright lines.
All files must include an SPDX license identifier indicating GPL-3.0-or-later. License compliance is checked using REUSE.
This program is free software, distributed under the terms of the GNU General Public Licence version 3 (GPL Version 3), copied verbatim in the file COPYING. You can redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of the GPL Version 3, or (at your option) any later version.
This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the GNU General Public License for more details.
In applying this licence, CERN does not waive the privileges and immunities granted to it by virtue of its status as an Intergovernmental Organization or submit itself to any jurisdiction.