Conference call notes 20250924 - easybuilders/easybuild GitHub Wiki

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Notes on the 279th EasyBuild conference call, Wednesday 24 Sept 2025 (15:00 UTC / 17:00 CEST)

Attendees

List of attendees (15):

  • Xavier Besseron (LuxProvide, Luxembourg)
  • Simon Branford (Univ. of Birmingham, UK)
  • Jorge Delgado Guerrero (University of Luxembourg)
  • Alex Domingo (Vrije Universiteit Brussel, Belgium)
  • Jasper Grimm (University of York, UK)
  • Alexander Grund (ZIH, Dresden, Germany)
  • Kenneth Hoste (HPC-UGent, Belgium)
  • Georgios Kafanas (University of Luxembourg)
  • Emik Lin (Univ. of Hong Kong)
  • Sam Moors (Vrije Universiteit Brussel, Belgium)
  • Sébastien Moretti (SIB, Switzerland)
  • Bart Oldeman (McGill, CQ, Digital Research Alliance Canada)
  • Jan Reuter (JSC, Germany)
  • Jörg Saßmannshausen (Imperial College London, UK)
  • 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: ASAP)
  • hopefully relatively quick release of EasyBuild v5.2.0 afterwards
    • incl. support for LLVM-based toolchain, NVHPC toolchain, etc.
    • ETA end Oct'25 (?)

News

  • Early announcement: 11th EasyBuild User Meeting (EUM'26) will take place Tue-Thu 21-23 April 2026 in Guimarães (Portugal), home of Deucalion EuroHPC system, co-organised with MACC (EuroHPC Hosting Entity)

Merge sprints

  • future easyconfigs merge sprints planned:
    • 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
      • keep ModuleTool.mod_paths in sync with $MODULEPATH in ModuleTool.load() (PR #4991)
      • fix failure to resolve templates in tests easyconfig parameter (PR #4994)
      • update regex used in Lmod.get_setenv_value_from_modulefile (PR #4998)
        • to fix compatibility with Lmod 8.7.60+ because of change in output of module show for module files in Tcl syntax (see also Lmod issue #792)
    • enhancements
      • ...
    • changes
      • ...
    • code cleanup
      • ...
    • CI/test suite
      • ...

  • easyblocks (merged PRs)

    • bug fixes
      • accept arguments for sanity_check_step in HPL easyblock (PR #3904)
      • Load module in Bundle easyblock instead of components (PR #3905)
      • Make HPL easyblock intel-aware + allow running the xhpl benchmark as a test (PR #3917)
      • resolve templates in CmdCp easyblock (PR #3918)
      • update WPS easyblock to patch CPP to replace the use of hardcoded /usr/bin/cpp (PR #3919)
      • fix FATAL ERROR regex to not match printf lines in OpenBLAS easyblock (PR #3923)
      • fix unresolved templates in modextravars/modextrapaths of Bundle components (PR #3940)
    • enhancements
      • enhance Bundle easyblock to show status of component installation (PR #3783)
      • set required Python environment variables when installing lammps Python package (PR #3915)
    • updates
      • update jaxlib easyblock for jax/jaxlib v0.6.2 and v0.7.0 (PR #3852)
    • changes
      • change buildenv easyblock: use python3 as default path to Python executable in RPATH wrapper scripts (PR #3910)
      • limit parallelism of OpenBLAS tests with parallel property (PR #3936)
    • new
      • ...
    • code cleanup
      • ...
    • CI
      • ...

  • easyconfigs (merged PRs)

    • ~100 easyconfig PRs were merged since last conf call
    • bug fixes/reports
      • add patch to re-enable -rpath-link for builds with Meson 1.8.2 (PR #23375)
      • add explicit libxml2 and libffi dependencies to LLVM 11.x/12.x/14.x (PR #23603)
      • fix patch for torchtext to use system libraries, to fix linking of RE2 in both PyTorch-bundle and torchtext (PR #23823)
      • add Simple-DFTD3 as dependency for CREST to avoid it being downloaded during the build (PR #23831)
      • use %%(source)s in STREAM easyconfigs (PR #23841)
      • fix typo in %(version)s template in easyconfig for AlphaFold v2.3.2 w/ CUDA 12.1.1 (PR #23850)
      • move Biopython down to gfbf toolchain level (PR #23870)
      • fix meson options for matplotlib 3.9+ (PR #23872)
      • add patch for Boost 1.85.0 to fix UB on flat_map/multimap containers (PR #23890)
      • add missing ICU dependency to Xerces-C++ (PR #23896)
      • consistently apply patch for recent OpenMPI versions to fix compatibility with recent GPFS versions (PRs #23908, #23911)
      • add patch to LLVM 20.1.8 to better support CUDA 13 and Blackwell GPUs (PR #23940)
      • add patch to fix failing tests for Net::SSLeay 1.92 and IO::Socket::SSL 2.083 in Perl-bundle-CPAN easyconfigs (PR #23967)
        • required on RHEL 9.6 due to OpenSSL 3.2.x
      • add missing zlib + zstd dependencies for Clang 18.1.8 (PR #23983)
    • enhancements
      • ...
    • (noteworthy) new software
      • ...
    • noteworthy software updates
    • cleanup
      • ...
    • changes
      • ...

Open (active) PRs

  • blog/docs (open PRs + issues)

  • framework (open PRs + issues)

    • bugs
      • Make sure cached easyconfigs don't get modifed (PR #4818)
      • RPATH wrappers may be ignored if /tmp is mounted with /noexec (issue #4910)
    • enhancements
    • code cleanup
      • ...
    • changes
      • Deprecate support for running EasyBuild with Python < 3.9 (PR #4966)
      • Make command environment of shell commands more discoverable in the log (PR #4999)
    • tests
      • also with test Python 3.14 (WIP PR #4992)
        • premature since Python 3.14 is not released yet (only RCs)
        • only 2 failing tests, one of which due to 3.14.0rc2 version

  • easyblocks (open PRs + issues)

    • bug fixes/reports
      • ...
    • enhancements
      • Add test for PyTorch test-results (XML files) parsing (PR #3803)
      • add dummy minor version to default CUDA version in NVHPC if not present (PR #3924)
      • enhance PythonPackage easyblock to error out when only build-options are given for pip-based Python package installation (PR #3925)
      • use clean_dir instead of remove_dir on installation directory in various easyblocks (PRs #3926, #3927, #3928, #3929, #3930, #3931, #3932, #3933, #3934, #3935)
      • add -DCACHE_SECTOR_SIZE_READONLY to when building BLIS for A64FX (PR #3938)
    • updates
      • Update CP2K easyblock for v2024 and v2025 (PR #3892)
      • Update LAMMPS easyblock: v2025 fix + extra tests (PR #3894)
      • update numpy easyblock for SciPy-bundle v2024.05 w/ iimkl/2024a (PR #3922)
    • changes
      • change LLVM EasyBlock to not apply concurrency workaround for pre-release LLVM 20 (PR #3937)
    • code cleanup
      • ...
    • new easyblocks
      • ...

  • easyconfigs (open PRs + issues)

    • bug fixes/reports
      • add patch for FlexiBLAS v3.3.1 to disable -ftree-vectorize for netlib LAPACK (PR #23974)
        • alternatives being considered...
        • only relevant on recent AMD systems (Genoa/Zen4 or Turin/Zen5), for relatively old toolchains (foss/2023a + foss/2023b)
    • enhancements
      • ...
    • (noteworthy) new software
      • ...
    • software updates
    • changes
      • use generic version of RAxML v8.2.13 as dependency for bcgTree and Parsnp (PR #23975)

Common toolchains

2025b

2026a

  • ETA early 2026
  • will likely use GCC 15.x as base...

Q&A / other

  • Jörg: puzzling test failures for OpenBabel PR
  • Jörg: NWChem with PLUMED w/ i8
    • NWChem downloads old version of PLUMED (and patching it) with own BLAS/LAPACK
    • Can we provide an easyconfig for PLUMED w/ i8?
    • @Jörg: please share relevant easyconfigs/patches so other who are interested can help