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Conference call notes 20220803

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Kenneth Hoste edited this page Aug 3, 2022 · 5 revisions

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Notes on the 203rd EasyBuild conference call, Wednesday 3 August 2022 (15:00 UTC)

Attendees

Alphabetical list of attendees (11):

  • Kenneth Hoste (HPC-UGent, Belgium)
  • Adam Huffman (Big Data Institute, Oxford, UK)
  • Terje Kvernes (University of Oslo, Norway)
  • Kurt Lust (Univ. of Antwerp, Belgium + LUMI User Support Team)
  • Sebastien Moretti (SIB, Switzerland)
  • Alexandre Strube (Jülich Supercomputing Centre, Germany)
  • Mikael Öhman (Chalmers University of Technology, Sweden)
  • Bart Oldeman (Digital Research Alliance of Canada)
  • Jörg Saßmannshausen (Imperial College London, UK)
  • Davide Vanzo (Microsoft Azure)
  • Caspar Van Leeuwen (SURFsara, Netherlands)

Agenda

  • overview of recent developments + outlook to next release
  • Q&A

Recent developments

  • https://sources.easybuild.io was down for a while
    • from 23 July'22 until 2 Aug'22
    • fallout:
      • no more automatic fallback source URL for failing downloads in EasyBuild
      • framework test suite broken, since some tests rely on sources.easybuild.io to be available
    • caused by migration of VM by fosshost support team (was planned since Dec'21, but kept being postponed)
    • VM had to be reconfigured after migration due to change in IP, could only be done by Kenneth (who was on summer vacation)
    • maybe better to move sources.easybuild.io to small VM in AWS or Azure, where it can easily be managed by other EB maintainers?
      • could leverage sponsored credits for EESSI project for this?
  • release timeline
    • latest release: EasyBuild v4.6.0 (8 July 2022)
    • ETA next release (EasyBuild v4.6.1?): end of Aug'22
  • recent changes
    • framework
      • bug fixes
        • fix code style issues reported by recent flake8 linter (PR #4049)
      • enhancements
        • add findPythonDeps.py script to find dependencies of Python packages (PR #3839)
      • changes
        • ...
    • easyblocks
      • bug fixes
        • update PyTorch easyblock to configure without breakpad support on POWER (PR #2763)
      • enhancements
        • reduce the number of command line options for 'cmake' command in CMakeMake generic easyblock (PR #2514)
        • improve PLUMED detection in GROMACS easyblock (PR #2749)
      • updates
        • update LAMMPS easyblock for LAMMPS/23Jun22 (PR #2213)
        • update libQGLViewer easyblock to take into account changes in the shared library names depending on Qt versions they are compiled with (PR #2730)
      • changes
        • ...
      • new software
        • ...
    • easyconfigs
    • framework
      • reported bugs / bug fixes
        • --sanity-check-only runs commands in installation dir (issue #4044)
        • handling of failing ldd also required in sanity_check_rpath (PR #4047)
          • fixed with: add get_linked_libs_raw function, and use it from both check_linked_shared_libs and sanity_check_rpath (PR #4051)
      • enhancements
        • add support for easystack file that contains easyconfig filenames + implement parsing of configuration options (PR #4021)
        • add easybuild.tools.LooseVersion (since distutils is deprecated in Python 3.10) (PR #3794)
          • see also issue #3963 on stop relying on distutils (will no longer be available in Python 3.12)
        • adding support for the use of --from-pr in EasyStack files (issue #4050)
      • changes
        • deprecate failure to resolve a template value (PR #3285)
        • run python in the same process as eb command (PR #4048)
        • add default moduleclass for AI/ML software? (easybuild issue #815)
    • easyblocks
      • bug reports/fixes
        • fix extension filter for Perl packages (PR #2699)
        • PythonPackage is not compatible with --sanity-check-only (issue #2745)
      • enhancements
        • enhance TensorFlow easyblock to take into account provided OpenSSL dependency (PR #2575)
        • support CP2K QM/MM in GROMACS easyblock (PR #2750)
        • make $LD_LIBRARY_PATH detection more robust for LAMMPS (PR #2765)
      • updates
        • update OpenFOAM easyblock to support OpenFOAM 10 + clean up variant/version checks (PR #2766)
      • new software
        • add easyblock for CUDA compatibility libraries (PR #2764)
      • changes
        • ...
    • easyconfigs

Q&A

  • Jörg: LAMMPS PR is blocked by yaff still requiring HDF5 1.10, cfr. PR #15869
    • worth checking whether yaff can be ported easily to HDF5 1.12 (and reaching out to the developers)?
  • Mikael: use of SYSTEM in dependencies in PR #15900, see also issue #15901
    • is a change in framework needed to avoid having to implement the workaround in the easyconfigs test suite?
  • Is the new Slack policy (90-day retention of messages) going to be a problem for us?
    • Is academic pricing (or special pricing for FOSS) worth looking into?
    • Should we consider alternatives?
      • Matrix (via Element.io)?
      • Mattermost (self-hosted)
      • Discord
      • IRC (back to the stone age)
  • Terje: question regarding Mesa drivers being built
    • DRI drivers are not being built? Would be useful for workstations using the Mesa installation
    • Is there a reason to not build them?
      • Bart: may be too close to the hardware => belongs in the OS?
    • Bart: workaround could be to use OS DRI drivers via an export command
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