Conference call notes 20200205 - easybuilders/easybuild GitHub Wiki

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Notes on the 141st EasyBuild conference call, Wednesday Feb 5th 2020 (17:00 - 18:30 CET)

Attendees

Alphabetical list of attendees (10):

  • Kenneth Hoste (HPC-UGent, Belgium)
  • Victor Holanda Rusu (CSCS, Switzerland)
  • Mikael Öhman (Chalmers University of Technology, Sweden)
  • Lars Viklund (Umeå University, Sweden)
  • Oriol Mula (HPCNow!)
  • Alan O'Cais (JSC, Germany)
  • Alexander Strube (JSC, Germany)
  • Adam Huffman (Big Data Institute, UK)
  • Bart Oldeman (ComputeCanada)
  • Caspar Van Leeuwen (SURFsara, Netherlands)

Agenda

  • support for tweaking of dependency versions (as discussed at EUM'20)
  • setting up an easyconfigs sprint for common dependencies in 2020a toolchains
  • better documentation for easyblocks
  • how can we tighten the feedback loop between contributors & maintainers/MotW?
  • conf calls at different times (for different timezones)?
  • Q&A

Tweaked dependency versions

  • based on presentation prepared by Caspar
    • --try-software-version & --try-toolchain-version sort of work (but can't be combined)
    • no way yet to tweak dependency version though...
  • see also Alan's old PR (https://github.com/easybuilders/easybuild-framework/pull/2599)
    • --try-update-deps takes into account existing easyconfigs to bump dep versions (or creates missing easyconfigs if they're missing)
    • having the possibility to overrule with specific versions (like in Caspar's proposal) could make sense
  • wish list of dependencies for 2020a made at SURFsara
    • --tweak-deps would take the list of dep versions and generate easyconfigs for it
    • should we also worry about versionsuffix?
    • step-wise implementation, make it experimental initially (freedom to change logic/default behavior)
  • Bart: https://github.com/ComputeCanada/easybuild-computecanada-config/blob/master/cc_hooks.py
    • hook used at ComputeCanada with manually maintained list of dep versions
    • doesn't generate required easyconfigs to resolve those dependencies, expected to be there already
  • Victor: bumping of toolchains & versions is now done with a script outside of EasyBuild
    • implemented by Eirini
    • currently not available publicly (yet)
  • Alan: dumping of easyconfigs is known not to be perfect
    • sometimes too aggressive w.r.t. resolving of template values
    • shouldn't be impossible to fix

Better documentation for easyblocks

  • based on presentation by Caspar
  • suggestion by Alexander (@Flamefire) to document easyblock behavior better in docstrings per step
  • "eb --easyblock-help" => Caspar will work on this

Tighter feedback loop between contributors & maintainers?

  • set a date to have a focused effort for 2020a toolchains
  • get working easyconfigs for most common dependencies
  • maybe even consider toolchain definition as a part of that effort, so it can be revised if needed
    • e.g. which Python 3 version do we pick, etc.
  • current plan for 2020a:
    • foss: GCC 9.2 + OpenMPI 4.0.3
      • hopefully also a new release of OpenBLAS (we should ping the OpenBLAS developers on that...)
    • intel: 2020 initial release for compilers

Conf calls in different time zones?

  • 5pm CET (once a month)
  • 10am CET (once a month)
  • 3am CET (once a month, hosted by Miguel?)
  • doodle for ML & Slack

Q&A

  • Mikael: has anyone looked at alternatives for OpenBLAS? BLIS?
    • Bart: BLIS seems to be within 95% of MKL in terms of performance