Conference call notes 20160929 - easybuilders/easybuild GitHub Wiki

(back to Conference calls)

Notes on the 60th EasyBuild conference call, Wednesday September 29th 2016 (5pm - 6pm CET)

Attendees

Alphabetical list of attendees (7):

  • Damian Alvarez Mallon (JSC, Germany)
  • Pablo Escobar (sciCORE, UniBas)
  • Markus Geimer (JSC, Germany)
  • Fotis Georgatos (Illumina, UK)
  • Kenneth Hoste (HPC-UGent)
  • Adam Huffman (Francis Crick Institute, UK)
  • Guilherme Peretti Pezzi (CSCS, Switzerland)

Agenda

Notes

EasyBuild 3.0: changes to default configuration
  • --modules-tool=Lmod --module-syntax=Lua
  • --minimal-toolchains?
    • how to deal with effect on dependencies in contributed easyconfigs?
      • Python.eb needs MPI => foss
        • depends zlib => GCC
    • change behaviour for --robot without --minimal-toolchains to always be aware of subtoolchains?
      • just other way around (from top toolchain down to subtoolchains)?
      • (still) first 'foss', then 'gompi', then 'GCC'
Deprecating toolchains
  • concerns by Fotis
    • maintain --try-toolchain facility
    • especially Clang-based toolchains
    • https://github.com/hpcugent/easybuild-easyconfigs/pull/1410
      • blocked by MVAPICH2 2.0.1 not building with Clang 3.6.0
      • just bump to newer MVAPICH2 (2.2.0 works)
    • goolfc
      • recent versions include OpenMPI that is CUDA-aware (2.6.10)
      • 1.4.10: CUDA on top of OpenMPI
      • or compose newer versions of these...
      • GROMACS is good use case for this
    • recent versions of iomkl are retained
Update on RPATH support
  • https://github.com/hpcugent/easybuild-framework/compare/develop...boegel:rpath?expand=1
  • current approach is to have a bash wrapper around compilers+ld that calls out to a Python script for manipulation of the command line arguments
  • status: Python script to transform arguments is mostly dummy implementation for now, but machinery is there to set up environment to use the wrappers
  • must also wrap compilers, because e.g. Clang doesn't hunt for ld via $PATH!
  • Markus: be careful with quotes in arguments passed to wrapper script, test this well!
  • WIP pull request coming up soon(ish)
  • Pablo is up for testing
Other
  • Damian: jhbuild installation of X.org

    • cfr. https://github.com/hpcugent/easybuild-easyconfigs/pull/3463
    • easyblock for jhbuild-based builds
    • nastiest bit is generated config files for jhbuild
    • will open easyblock PR for this
    • seems like this would also benefit from having support in framework for auto-renaming sources on download
    • unclear if jhbuilds requires installing everything in the same prefix?
    • jhbuild approach also used by other packages, e.g. GIMP
    • Pablo: diff with X11 bundle?
      • easier to install full X stack
      • this approach also includes Mesa
  • Markus: playing around with EasyBuild on AArch64

    • currently able to get a working GCC+binutils if --optarch is specified
      • to dance around issue with EasyBuild not being able to detect AArch64 CPU type
    • specify default optarch flag based on GCC version?
      • can be done via e.g. _set_compiler_vars in easybuild/toolchains/compiler/gcc.py
  • Guilherme: update on YAML easyconfigs?

    • only bug fixes recently (EasyBuild v2.8.2)
    • Alan has interest in taking this forward towards .yeb easyconfigs that support multiple toolchains
    • main concern is explosion in number of (customised) easyconfigs
    • base is there, biggest issue is that someone needs to find time to actually work on it
      • Kenneth is mostly focused on RPATH support now as 'next big thing', maybe .yeb is next...