Conference call notes 20191211 - easybuilders/easybuild GitHub Wiki

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Notes on the 138th EasyBuild conference call, Wednesday Dec 11th 2019 (17:00 - 18:00 CET)

Attendees

Alphabetical list of attendees (8):

• Fotis Georgatos (SDSC, Switzerland)
• Victor Holanda Rusu (CSCS, Switzerland)
• Kenneth Hoste (HPC-UGent, Belgium)
• Alan O'Cais (JSC, Germany)
• Mikael Öhman (Chalmers University of Technology, Sweden)
• Bart Oldeman (ComputeCanada)
• Åke Sandgren (Umeå University, Sweden)
• Davide Vanzo (UT Southwestern)

Agenda

• update on recent developments
• installing CUDA software: picking list of CUDA compute capabilities
• Q&A

Update on recent developments

• next release: before end of 2019 (v4.1.1)

• framework

  • merged PRs:
    • looser import vsc check: https://github.com/easybuilders/easybuild-framework/pull/3120
  • open PRs:
    • working towards better error reporting: https://github.com/easybuilders/easybuild-framework/pull/3118

• easyblocks:

  • merged PRs:
    • fixes for NCL easyblock: https://github.com/easybuilders/easybuild-easyblocks/pull/1862
    • CUDA fixes on POWER: https://github.com/easybuilders/easybuild-easyblocks/pull/1871 + https://github.com/easybuilders/easybuild-easyblocks/pull/1878
  • open PRs:
    • Python configure options: https://github.com/easybuilders/easybuild-easyblocks/pull/1876
    • Bazel fix on POWER: https://github.com/easybuilders/easybuild-easyblocks/pull/1875

• easyconfigs:

  • merged PRs (worth mentioning):
    • parallel build of CMake 3.15.3 + fix for POWER: https://github.com/easybuilders/easybuild-easyconfigs/pull/9469
    • CUDA 10.1 on POWER: https://github.com/easybuilders/easybuild-easyconfigs/pull/9442
    • GROMACS 2019.04: https://github.com/easybuilders/easybuild-easyconfigs/pull/9429
    • OpenFOAM (6 &) 7 with foss/2019b: https://github.com/easybuilders/easybuild-easyconfigs/pull/9390 + https://github.com/easybuilders/easybuild-easyconfigs/pull/9440
  • important open PRs:
    • add missing wcwidth extension for Python 2.7.{15,16}: https://github.com/easybuilders/easybuild-easyconfigs/pull/9479
    • POWER fixes:
      • Bazel (stick to Java/1.8): https://github.com/easybuilders/easybuild-easyconfigs/pull/9455
      • Java 1.8 missing OS deps: https://github.com/easybuilders/easybuild-easyconfigs/pull/9454

Installing CUDA software

• see CuCLARK PR: https://github.com/easybuilders/easybuild-easyconfigs/pull/9482
  • which CUDA compute capabilities should we set? cfr. https://developer.nvidia.com/cuda-gpus
• do we need support in framework to deal with this properly?
  • we should add a dedicated configuration to specify the CUDA compute capabilities
  • other relevant easyblocks/easyconfigs that could use this include PyTorch, RELION, VMD, Amber?
• current CUDA support in toolchains already has a way to specify a list of CUDA compute capabitilities via toolchainopts
  • but that's not a general setting, can only be specified in easyconfigs
  • only results in setting $CUDA_CXXFLAGS & co (not $NVCCFLAGS)
• related: we're no longer specifying CUDA compute capabilities for TensorFlow, shouldn't we?
  • looks like we stopped doing so when we started using the Bundle or PythonBundle easyblock in TensorFlow easyconfigs
  • so the question is what TensorFlow does by default...

Q&A

• Alan: container support is still installing vsc-base as a requirement for EasyBuild
  • see opened issue
• Victor: modules generated by EasyBuild do not ensure that FFTW libraries are linked
  • see buildenv module
    • set $CFLAGS & co
  • Cray compiler wrappers automatically link to FFTW libraries when cray-fftw module
• Åke: currently only buildenv/default in HMNS, should also have variants for foss vs intel, etc.
  • actual reason is escaping Åke right now
  • could be to discriminate between buildenv for subtoolchains
  • Alan: also set $CMAKE_* flags?
  • should be done for all modules we generate, not just buildenv?
  • only picked up if NO_DEFAULT_PATHS is not set in Find* CMake functions
    • this is often used, often need to patch this out
• Alan: progress on talks from EUM?
  • opening talk with EasyBuild update
  • talks proposals by John Dey (easy_update), buildtest, ReFrame, Sarus (container runtime by CSCS)...
  • tutorial on contributing back (more extensive than last year)
  • invite BEAR people to talk about EasyBuild on POWER?
  • (remote) talk with Spack update by Todd or Massimiliano?
  • Åke: maybe a talk on doing production builds in a "clean room" environment using Singularity containers
  • update on OpenHPC (2.0)?
• Victor: support in EasyBuild to submit installations to Kubernetes?
  • Fotis: does GC3Pie support this? (ask Riccardo Murri...)
• Åke: parallel setting should be using N times # available cores to make sure resources are used well...