Conference call notes 20190724 - easybuilders/easybuild GitHub Wiki

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Notes on the 129th EasyBuild conference call, Wednesday July 24th 2019 (17:00 - 18:00 CEST)

Attendees

Alphabetical list of attendees (6):

  • John Dey (Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center, USA)
  • Fotis Georgatos (SDSC, Switzerland)
  • Adam Huffman (Big Data Institute, Oxford)
  • Mikael Öhman (Chalmers University of Technology, Sweden)
  • Davide Vanzo (Vanderbilt University, USA)
  • Lars Viklund (Umeå University, Sweden)

Agenda

  • Removing R and Perl version suffixes starting from 2019b toolchains
  • 2019b toolchains
  • Software naming conflicts (capitalization)
  • Q&A

Removing R and Perl version suffixes starting from 2019b toolchains

  • Davide: We have been doing it internally and we had no issues for now.
  • John: For R and Perl it makes sense as long as we stick with a single version of interpreter for a toolchain.
  • Lars: How about if we have builds of the same software, one "bare" and the other built with support for an interpreter?
  • Mikael: How about packages that do not clearly indicate the interpreter in the name? For example in pkgconfig-1.5.1-GCCcore-8.2.0 we added "-python" version suffix to clarify it was a Python package unlike pkg-config.
  • John: I like the idea of getting rid of version suffix except for edge cases.
    • Davide: Managing edge cases will require white listing in the Travis checks. It should not be too much of a hassle.
  • Mikael: Nothing has a version suffix in the GCCcore-8.3.0 toolchain, so we could start with 2019b.

2019b toolchains

  • Mikael: Are we going for 8.3.0 or 9.x for GCC?
    • Davide: It depends on which version of GCC is supported by the Intel compilers.
    • Fotis: Also consider DDT and TotalView support.
    • Davide: Moreover, jumping on a new version at early minor release could expose us to potential bugs. It would be better to wait at least 2020a for version 9.x.

Software naming conflicts (capitalization)

  • Mikael: Groups that use all lowercase naming scheme will incur in module conflict when installing software which name differ only by capitalization (e.g. Salmon and SALMON).
  • Fotis: Expect even more troubles because generated environment variables will have the same name.
  • Mikael: We should add a Travis check to make sure we are not introducing naming conflicts.
  • Davide: I'll open a PR to fix SALMON

Q&A

  • Adam: Since bzip2 needs a sources URL update, is it ok to apply it retroactively to previous easyconfigs?
    • Davide: Yes, as long as we check that the checksums are consistent.