Conference call notes 20230607 - easybuilders/easybuild GitHub Wiki

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Notes on the 223rd EasyBuild conference call, Wednesday 7 June 2023 (15:00 UTC)

Attendees

List of attendees (17):

  • Sebastian Achilles (JSC, Germany)
  • Simon Branford (Univ. of Birmingham, UK)
  • Alex Domingo (Vrije Universiteit Brussel, Belgium)
  • Jasper Grimm (University of York, UK)
  • Sven Hansen (RWTH, Germany)
  • Kenneth Hoste (HPC-UGent, Belgium)
  • Terje Kvernes (University of Oslo, Norway)
  • Sam Moors (Vrije Universiteit Brussel, Belgium)
  • Sebastien Moretti (SIB, Switzerland)
  • Alan O'Cais (CECAM, Univ. of Barcelona)
  • Mikael Öhman (Chalmers University of Technology, Sweden)
  • Bart Oldeman (Digital Research Alliance of Canada)
  • Jurij Pečar (EMBL, Germany)
  • Jörg Saßmannshausen (Imperial College London, UK)
  • Alexandre Strube (JSC, Germany
  • Caspar van Leeuwen (SURF, Netherlands)
  • Davide Vanzo (Microsoft)

Agenda

  • overview of recent developments + outlook to next release
  • progress on 2023a update of common toolchains
  • Q&A

Recent developments

  • release timeline
    • latest release: EasyBuild v4.7.2 (28 May 2023)
    • ETA next release (EasyBuild v4.7.3?): end of June'23
  • progress on EasyBuild 5.0
  • recent changes
    • docs (merged PRs)
      • updates for EasyBuild v4.7.2 (PR #160 + PR #161)
      • review of controlling-compiler-optimization-flags page (PR #162)
      • switch markdown linter (PR #165)
        • slightly better, less false positives on YAML header
    • framework (merged PRs)
      • bug fixes
        • ...
      • enhancements
        • ...
      • changes
        • stop running tests with Python 2.7 since it is no longer supported in GitHub Actions (PR #4267)
          • we could restore running tests for EasyBuild 4.x via a CentOS 7 container - see also PR #3968 to ads end-to-end test for running EasyBuild in different Linux distros using containers
          • it's quite possible that support for running tests on top of Python 3.6 (EOL since Dec'21) will removed soon as well... :scream:
      • EasyBuild 5.0 (to 5.0.x branch)
        • ...
    • easyblocks (merged PRs)
      • bug fixes
        • update GCC easyblock to ensure that --sysroot is passed to linker (but only when it needs to be) (PR #2921)
        • enhance Cargo constructor to avoid processing list of crates multiple times into sources (PR #2934)
        • update OpenBLAS easyblock since make shared is necessary and sufficient with OpenBLAS 0.3.23 + recent parallel build fixes (PR #2944)
      • enhancements
        • ...
      • updates
        • ...
      • changes
        • stop running tests with Python 2.7 since it is no longer supported in GitHub Actions (PR #2943)
      • new software
        • ...
      • EasyBuild 5.0 (to 5.0.x branch)
        • ...
    • easyconfigs (merged PRs)
  • work in progress
    • docs (open PRs + issues)
    • framework (open PRs + issues)
      • reported bugs / bug fixes
        • Python packages are being installed to local/lib/python*/dist-packages due to tweaks to sysconfig.py in OS (issue #4128)
        • stop relying on imp (will no longer be available in Python 3.12) (issue #4264)
          • importlib is a "drop-in" replacement
      • enhancements
        • change tar command used in get_source_tarball_from_git to get reproducible tarballs (PR #4248)
          • considering this for EasyBuild 5.0
      • changes
        • use version suffixes in PR title instead of Python versions when using --new-pr (PR #4253)
      • EasyBuild 5.0 (to 5.0.x branch)
        • enable --trace by default (PR #4250)
          • significant effort needed to avoid broken tests due to extra output being generated
          • almost there: test suite passes, but there's some unexpected additional output not being captured/ignored
          • also need to verify whether GitHub tests (which are skipped in a PR) need some love
    • easyblocks (open PRs + issues)
      • bug reports/fixes
        • improve depot management in JuliaPackage (PR #2935)
          • see also issue #17455
          • Bart: should check use of : in $JULIA_DEPOT_PATH
        • add check to make sure that easyblocks that derive from Extension and customize sanity_check_step have a return statement (WIP PR #2940)
        • improve handling of optarch in Cargo easyblock (PR #2947)
        • fixes issue in sympy test step when tmpdir is a symlink (PR #2949)
      • enhancements
        • add support for NVIDIA Hopper CC 9.0 in LAMMPS (PR #2941)
      • updates
        • handle new directory structure for Intel Advisor (PR #2942)
      • new easyblocks
        • custom easyblock for TURBOMOLE (PR #2930)
        • custom easyblocks for Spparks and Stitch (PR #2948)
        • add PerlBundle generic easyblock for installing a bundle of Perl modules (PR #2945)
      • changes
        • ...
    • easyconfigs (open PRs + issues)

2023a update of common toolchains

Q&A

  • Jörg: configure problem with OpenMPI 4.1.4 on system with PBSPro
    • done via a hook
      • pre-configure
        • self.cfg['configopts'] = self.cfg['configopts'] + '--with-tm=/opt/pbs --enable-ipv6 '
      • pre-prepare
        • self.cfg['preconfigopts'] = self.cfg['preconfigopts'] + 'LIBS="/lib64/libcrypto.so.1.1.1k $LIBS "'
          • can pbs be asked how to link to it (via pkg-config?)
          • should try with -lpbs -lcrypto?
          • shouldn't be linking to .so.1.1.1k, but .so
    • libpbs is pulling in the OpenSSL dependency
    • including OpenSSL/1.1 as a dependency for OpenMPI could help, because it will affect which paths are considered by pkg-config
    • should also test OpenMPI v4.1.5 - https://github.com/easybuilders/easybuild-easyconfigs/pull/18053
  • Jurij: Any plans for ROCm?