Conference call notes 20221109 - easybuilders/easybuild GitHub Wiki

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Notes on the 209th EasyBuild conference call, Wednesday 9 November 2022 (09:00 UTC)

Attendees

List of attendees (12):

  • Simon Branford (Univ. of Birmingham, UK)
  • Alex Domingo (Vrije Universiteit Brussel, Belgium)
  • Ade Fewings (Supercomputing Wales, UK)
  • Jasper Grimm (University of York, UK)
  • Kenneth Hoste (HPC-UGent)
  • Adam Huffman (Big Data Institute, Oxford, UK)
  • Kurt Lust (UAntwerpen & LUST)
  • Sam Moors (Vrije Universiteit Brussel, Belgium)
  • Jurij Pečar (EMBL, Germany)
  • Jörg Saßmannshausen (Imperial College London, UK)
  • Thomas Hayward-Schneider (Max Planck Institute for Plasma Physics, Germany)
  • Minas Trattou (Cyprus Institute)

Agenda

  • overview of recent developments + outlook to next EasyBuild release
  • update on porting of EasyBuild docs to MarkDown
  • 2022b common toolchain
  • Q&A

Recent developments

  • release timeline
    • latest release: EasyBuild v4.6.2 (21 Oct 2022)
    • ETA next release (EasyBuild v4.6.3?): by end of Nov?
  • recent changes
    • framework
      • bug fixes
        • also use EasyConfig instances cache in process_easyconfig when build_specs is empty dict (PR #4107)
        • tweak findPythonDeps.py to use canonical package names (PR #4118)
        • add -fdefault-double-8 to r8 toolchain compiler option for GCC (to be consistent with Intel) (PR #4121)
      • enhancements
        • ...
      • changes
        • ...
    • easyblocks
      • bug fixes
        • fix installing of Clang with RPATH linking (PR #2799)
        • add include/opencv4 to $CPATH for OpenCV versions >= 4.0 (PR #2818)
      • enhancements
        • add fix_shebang to install_step of PythonPackage easyblock so that we can fix shebangs when installing extensions (PR #2680)
      • updates
        • update PETSc easyblock for newer versions (PR #2796)
      • changes
        • update HDF5 easyblock to use --enable-threadsafe configure option to make C API thread safe (PR #2824)
      • new software
        • ...
    • easyconfigs
  • work in progress
    • framework
      • reported bugs / bug fixes
        • sanity_check_rpath should not check for libcuda.so.1 (PR #4095)
      • enhancements
        • add easybuild.tools.LooseVersion (since distutils is deprecated in Python 3.10) (PR #3794)
        • take into account custom configuration options specified in easystack file + drop support for easystack files using 'software' top-level key (PR #4057)
        • add support for --filter-rpath-sanity-libs to skip RPATH sanity check for designated libraries (PR #4119)
      • changes
        • also run unit tests with Python 3.11 (WIP) (PR #4092)
    • easyblocks
      • bug reports/fixes
        • use gfortran for -g77 option when installing NVHPC (PR #2819)
        • remove -openmp build option for MRtrix v3.x (PR #2822)
      • enhancements
        • add extra option for disabling LAPACK in ESMF (PR #2821)
      • updates
        • ...
      • new software
      • changes
        • ...
    • easyconfigs

Update on porting of EasyBuild docs to MarkDown

2022b common toolchains

  • proposal for foss/2022b (first as foss/2022.10 - libfabric 1.16.1 was released 8 Oct'22):
    • GCC 12.2.0 + binutils 2.39 (current latest)
    • UCX 1.13.1 + libfabric 1.16.1 + OpenMPI v4.1.4 (current latest) - same as in foss/2022a
    • OpenBLAS 0.3.21 + FlexiBLAS 3.2.1 (current latest)
    • FFTW 3.3.10 (current latest) - same as in foss/2022a
    • ScaLAPACK 2.2.0 (current latest) - same as in foss/2022a
  • proposal for intel/2022b:
  • key software
    • Perl 5.36.0 (done, see PR #16204)
    • Python 3.10.8 (not 3.11.0)

Q&A

  • Alex: Is there an overview of changes planned for EasyBuild v5.0?
  • Alex: Should we consider moving all bundles to use components rather than extensions?
    • currently we can only install bundles of components from scratch (while installed extensions can be skipped)
    • there's also integration of extensions into Lmod (so they can be searched via "module spider")
    • extensions have non-obvious limitations (like modextravars not being picked up)
    • best way to support this would be to implement "native" support for a bundle of components in EasyBuild framework?
  • Kurt: should implement support for short_description to determine what goes into whatis line in module name
  • Jörg: problem with software that is downloading stuff in particular folders