O2 Mergers

Mergers are DPL devices able to merge objects produced in parallel. These can be TObjects or custom object inheriting MergeInterface. Topologies of mergers can be created using the o2::mergers::MergerInfrastructureBuilder class. To generate only one Merger, one can also use o2::mergers::MergerBuilder. Mergers provide a handful of options which are listed in the include/Mergers/MergerConfig.h file.

See the snippet from src/mergersTopologyExample.cxx as a usage example:

...
 
void customize(std::vector<CompletionPolicy>& policies)
{
  MergerBuilder::customizeInfrastructure(policies);
}
 
#include <Framework/runDataProcessing.h>
 
...
 
using namespace o2::mergers;
 
MergerInfrastructureBuilder mergersBuilder;
 
mergersBuilder.setInfrastructureName("histos");
mergersBuilder.setInputSpecs(mergersInputs);
mergersBuilder.setOutputSpec({{ "main" }, "TST", "HISTO", 0 });
 
MergerConfig config;
config.inputObjectTimespan = { InputObjectsTimespan::LastDifference };
config.mergedObjectTimespan = {MergedObjectTimespan::FullHistory};
config.publicationDecision = { PublicationDecision::EachNSeconds, 5};
config.topologySize = { TopologySize::NumberOfLayers, 2};
 
mergersBuilder.setConfig(config);
 
mergersBuilder.generateInfrastructure(specs); 
    
...

It creates a 2-layer topology of Mergers, which will consume mergerInputs and send merged object on the Output {{"main"}, "TST", "HISTO", 0 }. The infrastructure will integrate the received differences and each 5 seconds it will merge and publish the merged object. It will consist of a full history of the data that the topology will have received.