Conference call notes 20180808

Notes on the 107th EasyBuild conference call, Wednesday August 8th 2018 (5pm - 6pm CEST)

Alphabetical list of attendees (6):

long-term outlook to EasyBuild v4
- goals
- brainstorm on potential backwards-incompatible changes that could/should be included
more automation to make handling of incoming contributions less time-consuming
- what can boegelbot do more than it does now?
more organized testing of contributions
- use standardized Singularity images to test in isolation of OS?
Q&A

no timeline yet for EasyBuild v4, right now just collecting ideas for things that should be included there
Python 3 support
- depends on vsc-base being compatible with Python 3 (some progress was made there, but it has stalled again...)
switching to pip for Python packages
- right now still using setuptools, while pip is the recommended installation mechanism for Python packages
- need to start enforcing 'use_pip = True'?
- Fotis: some concern about auto-downgrading of packages by pip
- not an issue with EB, should be disabled already
archiving old easyconfigs (ictce, ...)
Pablo: more flexible dependency version specification (e.g. ranges)
- for example ('CMake', '3.*')?
- Davide:
- potentially quite a hornets nest?
- goes against EasyBuild philosophy
- less flexible alternative: --freeze-deps idea (good first step?)
- other extreme is Spack, which is very flexible w.r.t. specifying dependencies
  - Spack does support replicating an existing installation
- Fotis: related feature: specifying version 'range' for particular (common) dependencies
- related?: --try-* enhancement by Alan, cfr. https://github.com/easybuilders/easybuild-framework/pull/2539
Pablo: what about .yeb easyconfigs?
- Kenneth: not being worked on right now, shouldn't block progress with EB v4
stable --containerize support?
will be discussed in depth at next EasyBuild User Meeting
follow-up via https://github.com/easybuilders/easybuild/issues/447

more checks that should be done in Travis (with failures reported by @boegelbot)
- missing checksums
- enforce use of 'download_dep_fail = True' in new easyconfigs used PythonPackage
  - also "use_pip = True" ?
automatically ask for a test report after 1 day?
- would require some logic to avoid making it too aggressive?
- concern about PRs with many toolchains
automatically closing old/stale PRs?
- Pablo: auto-tag PRs to-be-closed, and then have MotW look at them?
- or auto-comment on stale PRs + tag them, mention they will be (auto-)closed unless there's no activity
  - start with PRs with no activity older than 1 year + no follow-up activity for 6 months after marking it stale, and then gradually make it stricter?
- see also Spack discussion: https://github.com/spack/spack/pull/8811

using Docker/Singularity images to organize testing more?
- isolate from OS, also more consistency w.r.t. testing on different OSs
- Pablo: using Docker images allows to use with Docker/Singularity/Shifter/uDocker
- start repo with container recipes to use for this?
  - or maybe even images provided via DockerHub?
also have a public dashboard showing what was tested where?

Victor: how well are architectures other than x86 support?
- framework itself should be generic, logic can be used in easyblocks
- some easyblocks/configs still have hardwired x86-specific stuff, but that's bugs that should be fixed
- Fotis: --include-toolchains
- Alan has played around with EB on POWER quite a bit
- Markus has played around a bit with EB on ARM
  - Victor: didn't work out-of-the-box on ARM Calvium X2 after a quick try...
Victor: support for Docker containers?
- now covered by --containerize since EB v3.6.2 (but docs @ http://easybuild.readthedocs.io/en/latest/Containers.html need updating)
Davide: deadline for Python@GCCcore + Java/JDK bundle?
- try to set up a working group in maintainers mailing list for these?

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