Tools for GRID deployment of CDF offline and SAM data handling systems for Summer 2004 computing

The Fermilab CDF Run-II experiment is now providing official support for remote computing, which has provided approximately 35% of the total CDF computing capacity during the summer of 2004. We face the challenge of unreliable networks, time differences, and remote managers having little experience with this particular software. The approach we have taken has been to separate the data handling components from the main CDF offline code releases by means of shared libraries, permitting live upgrades to otherwise frozen code. We now use a special ''development lite'' release to ensure that all sites have the latest tools available. We have put substantial effort into revision control, so that essentially all active CDF sites are running exactly the same SAM code.