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Conference call notes 20190626

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Kenneth Hoste edited this page Jun 26, 2019 · 2 revisions

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Notes on the 127th EasyBuild conference call, Wednesday June 26th 2019 (17:00 - 18:00 CEST)

Attendees

Alphabetical list of attendees (8):

  • Kenneth Hoste (HPC-UGent)
  • Victor Holanda (CSCS, Switzerland)
  • Alan O'Cais (Jülich Supercomputing Centre)
  • Davide Vanzo (Vanderbilt University)
  • Adam Huffman (Big Data Institute, Oxford)
  • Fotis Georgatos (SDSC, Switzerland)
  • Damian Alvarez (Jülich Supercomputing Centre)
  • Bart Oldeman (ComputeCanada)

Agenda

  • update on next release (EasyBuild v3.9.3)
  • update on progress towards to EasyBuild 4.0
  • 2019b update of common toolchains
  • Q&A

Next release (EasyBuild v3.9.3)

  • ETA: 1st week of July
  • mostly to get release out with software updates, minor bug fixes, etc.
  • update to EasyBuildMeta easyblock to support installing EasyBuild 4.0.0 (alpha)

Progress towards EasyBuild 4.0

  • ETA:
    • alpha early July?
    • final 4.0.0 release by end of August'19
  • current status:
    • port to Python 3 is considered complete (no known issues), but more testing is needed
    • building OpenFOAM from scratch with eb running on top of python3 works
  • blockers
    • PR to warn about incorrectly named (non-single-letter) local variables in easyconfigs + enhanced --fix-deprecated-easyconfigs to rename foo to local_foo
    • changes to default configuration settings
      • cfr. https://github.com/easybuilders/easybuild-framework/issues/2927
      • enable fixed-installdir-naming-scheme by default
        • makes it easier to have multiple different module trees for the same installations
        • Davide: how about having a check to see whether people will be impacted?
          • only check for toolchain being used?
          • make sure we discriminate between default and configured value
        • Victor: how easy is it to change to a different MNS?
          • --module-only is helpful there, but it's not perfect...
          • Alan: could be made easier by catching all metadata used to generate module file
      • installdir as read-only? (https://github.com/easybuilders/easybuild-framework/issues/123)
        • to protect installation of Python packages from fiddling in the Python 'parent'
        • Victor: should be configurable
          • Kenneth: and it is already :)
        • Damian: may cause problems w.r.t. installations that were made group writable?
          • doing both read-only install dirs and having group-writable installs doesn't work...
          • would require disabling making install dir read-only...
          • related: clash between group-writable and protecting installation for particular group
            • see issue ... 2305
            • only real fix for this would be to add proper support in EasyBuild for ACLs
    • Bart: drop support for 32-bit?
      • mostly code cleanup in framework
      • could help with order in $LDFLAGS vs $LIBRARY_PATH

2019b update of common toolchains

  • https://easybuild.readthedocs.io/en/latest/Common-toolchains.html
  • foss/2019b
    • GCC 8.3 or 9.1 (+ latest binutils)? [was GCC 8.2]
      • conservative choice is to go with 8.3 (used at JSC)
      • 9.1 installed as extra compiler at ComputeCanada (better C++17 support)
    • OpenMPI 3.1.4 or 4.0.1? [was OpenMPI 3.1.3]
      • Bart: OpenMPI 4.0 is really not that dissimilar from OpenMPI 3.x
    • OpenBLAS 0.3.6 + ScaLAPACK 2.0.2 (latest) [was OpenBLAS 0.3.5 + patches]
      • Bart: 0.3.6 still needs a fix for AVX512 (can be ported from patch used in 0.3.5 easyconfig?)
      • should we consider a switch to BLIS?
    • FFTW 3.3.8 (latest, no updates)
  • intel/2019b
    • GCC 8.3 or 9.1 + (latest binutils) as base [was GCC 8.2]
    • Intel compilers 2019 update 4 [was 2019 update 1]
    • Intel MPI 2019 update 4 [was 2018 update 4]
    • Intel MKL 2019 update 4 [was 2019 update 1]

Q&A

  • Fotis: update on support for easyconfigs in YAML syntax (*.yeb)?
    • Kenneth: not much progress on that, migrating to the new syntax is a big hurdle
    • Alan: there's a PR to internally convert a .yeb easyconfig to a normal easyconfig
    • Victor: survey was done in CSCS, 0% wanted to move from .eb to .yeb
    • motivation?
      • Alan: maintenance can be simplified significantly with fat easyconfigs
        • Kenneth: which is orthogonal to YAML
  • Damian: anyone looking into support for enabling GCC support for OpenMP 4.5 offload to NVIDIA?
    • Bart has briefly looked at it
    • requires an extra library (NVIDIA PTX)
    • requires a 2-step bootstrap of GCC (similar to CLooG/ISL approach?)
    • Davide provides PGI for OpenACC (not really related)
  • Victor: support for figuring out for which parent a required dep is missing
    • similar for external modules
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