Conference call notes 20210331 - easybuilders/easybuild GitHub Wiki

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Notes on the 169th EasyBuild conference call, Wednesday March 31st 2021 (15:00 UTC)

Attendees

Alphabetical list of attendees (13):

  • Sebastian Achilles (Jülich Supercomputing Centre, Germany)
  • Simon Branford (University of Birmingham, UK)
  • Steve Davis (Smith College, US)
  • Fotis Georgatos (SDSC, Switzerland)
  • Alexander Grund (TU Dresden, Germany)
  • 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)
  • Mikael Öhman (Chalmers University of Technology, Sweden)
  • Bart Oldeman (Compute Canada)
  • Jörg Saßmannshausen (NIHR Biomedical Research Centre, UK)

Agenda

  • update on recent developments
  • 2021a update of common toolchains
    • outlook to component versions
    • BLAS/LAPACK component: OpenBLAS vs BLIS, maybe FlexiBLAS?
    • collapsing foss and fosscuda toolchains
  • Q&A

Recent developments

  • next release: some time in the coming weeks
  • recent changes
    • framework
      • bug fixes
        • add option to write file from file-like object and use in download_file (PR #3614)
          • fixes crash when downloading large files with recent Python 3.x (issue #3455)
        • make sure that path to eb command is always found by tests (PR #3617)
      • enhancements
        • added configuration option to define the env command to use for shebangs (PR #3613)
      • changes
        • (none)
    • easyblocks
      • bug fixes
        • (nothing major)
      • enhancements
        • make WRF and WPS easyblocks aware of (pre)configopts (PR #2361)
        • enhance BWA easyblock: pass compiler flags + use filetools functions (PR #2368)
        • enhance PythonPackage easyblock to catch faulty version (0.0.0) for installed Python packages (PR #2367)
      • changes
        • use PYPI_SOURCE as the default for source_urls of PythonPackage (PR #2364 + PR #2370)
          • easyconfig files were updated accordingly (see for example PR #12451)
          • tests were enhanced to fail when [PYPI_SOURCE] is used in source_urls for Python packages (PR #12456)
    • easyconfigs
      • over 50 merged easyconfig PRs since last conf call
      • bug fixes
        • (nothing major)
      • enhancements
        • (nothing major)
      • new software
        • (nothing major)
      • noteworthy software updates
      • noteworthy changes
        • (none)
  • to merge/fix/tackle soon
    • framework
      • bug fixes
        • performance improvements for easyconfig parsing (PR #3555)
        • avoid module use in Lmod if possible to allow faster execution (PR #3557)
      • enhancements
        • support additional features in easystack files
          • support for filtering via labels (PR 3620)
        • add templates for architecture independent Python wheels (PR #3618)
        • show the easyblocks repo and PR number when uploading a test report against that (PR #3622)
      • changes
        • refactor the CI configuration to use inclusion instead of exclusion (PR #3616)
          • nice cleanup, but will require changing which test configuration must pass...
          • implies that tests for all framework PRs will need to be re-triggered after this is merged
    • easyblocks
      • bug fixes
        • treat files/directories of unpacked sources equally in PackedBinary (PR #2306)
        • make the CUDA stub libs take preference over system libs when linking (PR #2373)
        • also set $TORCH_CUDA_ARCH_LIST for PyTorch tests (PR #2363)
      • enhancements
        • enhance CUDA support in CP2K easyblock (WIP) (PR #2349)
          • this could use a review
          • currently requires a single value in --cuda-compute-capabilities EasyBuild configuration option or cuda_compute_capabilities easyconfig parameter
          • do we need custom easyconfig parameters to easily enable/disable the different GPU capabilities supported by CP2K?
        • enhance cuDNN, CUDA, and Java easyblocks to support aarch64 (PR #2356)
        • add Java wrapper support to OpenMPI (PR #2360)
          • still missing a matching easyconfig PR that leverages this?
        • enable installation of samples for CUDA > 10.1 (PR #2374)
        • don't unpack *.whl files by default in generic PythonPackage easyblock (PR #2366)
      • changes
        • set $R_LIBS_SITE rather than $R_LIBS when installing R packages (PR #2326)
      • new software
        • new easyblock for NCCL (built from source) (PR #2337)
        • custom easyblock for FlexiBLAS (PR #2369)
    • easyconfigs
      • bug fixes
        • make sure that VTK 9.0.1 links to libpython by configuring with -DVTK_PYTHON_OPTIONAL_LINK=OFF (PR #12480)
        • fix numpy tests for recent SciPy-bundle easyconfig on POWER (PR #12481)
      • enhancements
        • require sanity_pip_check for all Python package/bundles touched in PRs (PR #12464)
          • also for stuff installed with python setup.py install
          • because pip check will also see those packages
          • if we don't enforce sanity_pip_check always, pip check may fail if dependency was installed via setup.py and was broken
      • new software
      • software updates
        • PyTorch 1.8.0 (PR #12347)
          • PyTorch only test against MKL which is probably connected to failures in their testsuite
          • should probably be bumped to 1.8.1
        • goblf/2020b (PR #12381)

2021a update of common toolchains

  • outlook to component versions
    • GCC 10.3 (to be released soon-ish?)
    • OpenMPI 4.1.1 (out soon)
    • Intel oneAPI versions of compilers, MPI, MKL?
  • BLAS/LAPACK component: OpenBLAS vs BLIS, maybe FlexiBLAS?
  • collapsing foss and fosscuda toolchains
  • HMNS should be updated to be aware of intel-compilers component

Q&A

  • (none)