Conference call notes 20250730 - easybuilders/easybuild GitHub Wiki

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Notes on the 275th EasyBuild conference call, Wednesday 30 July 2025 (15:00 UTC / 17:00 CEST)

Attendees

List of attendees (18):

  • Alex Domingo (Vrije Universiteit Brussel, Belgium)
  • Davide Grassano (CECAM)
  • Jasper Grimm (University of York, UK)
  • Alexander Grund (ZIH, Dresden, Germany)
  • Kenneth Hoste (HPC-UGent, Belgium)
  • Adam Huffman (University of Oxford, UK)
  • Vladislav Mogilev (Univ. of Birmingham, UK)
  • Thomas Langford (Yale University, US)
  • Kurt Lust (UAntwerpen / LUMI)
  • Sébastien Moretti (SIB, Switzerland)
  • Mikael Öhman (Chalmers University of Technology, Sweden)
  • Jure Pečar (EMBL, Germany)
  • Lara Peeters (HPC-UGent, Belgium)
  • Andrea Piserchia (E4)
  • Jan Reuter (JSC, Germany)
  • Jörg Saßmannshausen (Imperial College London, UK)
  • Bart Oldeman (McGill University, Digital Research Alliance of Canada)
  • Cintia Willemyns (Vrije Universiteit Brussel, Belgium)

Agenda

  • overview of recent developments
  • update of common toolchains
  • Q&A

Recent developments

  • latest EasyBuild release: EasyBuild v5.1.1 (6 July 2025)
  • next (stable) EasyBuild release: EasyBuid v5.1.2 (ETA: end of Aug'25)

News

  • future easyconfigs merge sprints planned:
    • Mon 18 Aug 2025
    • Mon 13 Oct 2025
    • Mon 15 Dec 2025
    • Mon 16 Feb 2026
    • aiming for semi-fixed schedule every other month: 3rd Monday in even months

Merged PRs

(changed made in PRs marked with * are included latest EasyBuild stable release)

  • blog/docs (merged PRs)

    • ...

  • framework (merged PRs)

    • bug fixes
      • ...
    • enhancements
      • Add support for amdgcn-capabilities configuration option and amdgcn_capabilities easyconfig parameter + related templates, similar to cuda-compute-capabilities (PR #4860)
    • changes
      • ...
    • code cleanup
      • ...
    • CI/test suite
      • fix broken tests for GitHub integration features (PR #4913)

  • easyblocks (merged PRs)

    • bug fixes
      • revert Python shebangs change for conda (PR #3760)
      • Moving openmp to a runtime in newer versions of LLVM (PR #3799)
      • add explicit enabling/disabling of libffi with custom paths in LLVM easyblock (PR #3849)
      • fix missing LIBOMPTARGET_DEVICE_ARCHITECTURES in third stage of bootstrap build in LLVM easyblock (PR #3851)
      • stop using deprecated verbose option in build step of BLAT easyblock (PR #3858)
    • enhancements
      • make LLVM easyblock aware of amdgcn_capabilities build option (PR #3824)
      • Improve error message when CMake picked up invalid Python paths (PR #3833)
    • updates
      • Update TensorFlow easyblock for CUDA support in TensorFlow 2.18+ (PR #3765)
      • Update DualSPHysics sanity checks for newer version (PR #3850)
    • changes
      • stop setting separate_build_dir to True in various easyblocks
      • clean up ancient version support in custom easyblock for ROOT (PR #3841)
    • CI
      • ...

  • easyconfigs (merged PRs)

    • XXX easyconfig PRs were merged since last conf call
    • bug fixes/reports
      • add patch to EasyBuild 5.1.1 easyconfig for bug that causes failures when copying readonly patches (PR #23442)
    • enhancements
      • ...
    • (noteworthy) new software
      • ...
    • noteworthy software updates
    • cleanup
      • ...
    • changes
      • ...

Open (active) PRs

  • docs (open PRs + issues)

  • framework (open PRs + issues)

    • bugs
      • show readable error message when applying patch without (extracted) source (PR #4738)
      • ignore unmodified files when using --new-pr or --update_pr (PR #4753)
      • Make sure cached easyconfigs don't get modifed (PR #4818)
      • correctly detect final path when extracting multiple tarballs (PR #4922)
      • do not do ext.toolchain.prepare twice if the parallel extension install raises NotImplementedError (PR #4949)
      • enhance test for finding related easyconfigs and fix it (PR #4957)
      • do not touch installation directory for --module-only (re)builds (PR #4958)
      • fix error when adding files to existing PR and refactor test file (PR #4962)
      • add back OrderedDict import in (deprecated) easybuild.tools.py2vs3.py3 module (PR #4965)
    • enhancements
      • make specifying exts_defaultclass optional (PR #4800)
      • implementing a new LLVM based toolchain (WIP(?) PR #4914)
        • ready for testing
      • proposed changes to make EasyBuild plugin-able through entrypoints (PR #4918)
      • make NVHPC a full toolchain with nvidia-compilers, NVHPCX and NVBLAS (PR #4927)
        • ready to merge, will help
      • retry fetching extensions from PyPI with alternative download_filename (PR #4943)
      • click CLI wrapper around normal CLI (PR #4961)
    • code cleanup
      • ...
    • changes
      • empty install dir but don't remove it (PR #4932)
      • Don't log variables (un)set when cleaning up fake module (PR #4942)
      • Ban ligomp.so at GCCcore level (PR #4951)
      • deprecate support for running EasyBuild with Python < 3.9 (PR #4966)

  • easyblocks (open PRs + issues)

    • bug fixes/reports
      • reintroduce configopts in PETSc for dependencies with generic --with options (PR #3857)
      • remove duplicated output of test command from PythonPackage easyblock (PR #3859)
    • enhancements
      • Changes to Easyblocks needed to work with the new LLVM toolchain (PR #3759)
      • Set $NCCL_HOME in NCCL easyblock (PR #3782)
      • Show status of component installation (Bundle easyblock) (PR #3783)
      • enhance LAMMPS easyblock to select best performing FFT library (PR #3784)
      • Add option to CMakeMake to specify name of build directory (PR #3786)
      • add option to run unittests of LAMMPS (PR #3789)
      • Add test for PyTorch test-results (XML files) parsing (PR #3803)
      • Add LLVM toolchain support for Boost (PR #3855)
      • add support to Python easyblock for conditionally adding patches when EasyBuild is configured to filter LD_LIBRARY_PATH (PR #3860)
    • updates
      • update ORCA easyblock for version 6.1.0 (PR #3796)
      • Update jaxlib easyblock for jax/jaxlib v0.6.2 (PR #3852)
    • changes
      • Deprecate the Clang Easyblock in favor of the LLVM one for newer (>=18.1.6) versions of LLVM (PR #3746)
    • code cleanup
      • ...
    • new easyblocks
      • ...

  • easyconfigs (open PRs + issues)

    • bug fixes/reports
      • ...
    • enhancements
      • ...
    • (noteworthy) new software
      • ...
    • software updates
      • ...
    • changes
      • ...

2025b common toolchains

Q&A / others

  • chatter on BLAS performance
    • AOCL-BLAS (AMD's fork of BLIS) + AOCL-LAPACK (AMD's fork of libFLAME) on AMD CPUs
      • test suite issues with AOCL-LAPACK were fixed recently
  • Jan: progress on ROCm-related easyconfigs
  • Mikael: 64-bit int support through FlexiBLAS (issue #3854)
    • unclear whether BLIS has support for symbol suffixes
  • PyTorch:
    • start with easyconfigs that install pre-built wheels
    • allows to built stuff on top more quickly
    • modulerc approach similar to Java to have easy way to do "drop-in" update
    • RPATH woes, does software link to libtorch.so?
    • PyTorch wheel requires Python NVIDIA packages, need to look out for that
    • maybe dedicated working group on this?
      • => #pytorch channel in EasyBuild Slack
  • Jörg: xtb/CREST reinstall failures
  • Alex: unclear why RPATH sanity check is only failing for librsvg in bot
  • Mikael: would be good to have out.txt file of shell commands for test reports in easyconfig PRs
    • maybe only accessible to EasyBuild maintainers (who can get access to jsc-zen3 with their own personal account)