Conference call notes 20230802

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Notes on the 226th EasyBuild conference call, Wednesday 2 Aug 2023 (15:00 UTC)

Attendees

List of attendees (8):

• Kenneth Hoste (HPC-UGent, Belgium)
• Kurt Lust (UAntwerpen, Belgium + LUMI User Support Team)
• Sam Moors (Vrije Universiteit Brussel, Belgium)
• Jörg Saßmannshausen (Imperial College London, UK)
• Thomas Hayward-Schneider (Max Planck Institute for Plasma Physics, Germany)
• Sebastian Achilles (JSC, Germany)
• Kraig Theriault (Astellas)
• Xavier Besseron (Univ. of Luxembourg)

Agenda

• overview of recent developments
• Q&A

Recent developments

• progress on EasyBuild 5.0
  • see updates in https://github.com/easybuilders/easybuild/wiki/EasyBuild-5.0-working-group
  • WIP PR on new run function (PR #)
• recent changes
  • docs (merged PRs)
    • ...
  • framework (merged PRs)
    • bug fixes
      • don't fail in mkdir if path gets created while processing it (PR #4300)
    • enhancements
      • suggest default title in --review-pr (PR #4287)
    • changes
      • ...
    • EasyBuild 5.0 (to 5.0.x branch)
      • remove support for 32-bit targets (PR #4272)
  • easyblocks (merged PRs)
    • bug fixes
      • disable disk space check in STAR-CCM+ installer (PR #2956)
      • fix type check for optarch value in Cargo easyblock (PR #2969)
    • enhancements
      • add support for building CP2K with libvori support (PR #2967)
      • enable system pybind11 for PyTorch 1.10+ to make sure pybind11 provided as dependency is used (PR #2968)
    • updates
      • ...
    • changes
      • ...
    • new easyblocks
      • ...
    • EasyBuild 5.0 (to 5.0.x branch)
      • ...
  • easyconfigs (merged PRs)
    • over XXX easyconfig PRs were merged since last conf call
    • bug fixes
      • add hpctestlib to the $PYTHONPATH in ReFrame 4.2.0 easyconfig (PR #18320)
      • fix compiler flags and toolchain options for ScaLAPACK (PR #18396 + PR #18397)
      • [Score-P 8.0] Fix CUDA issue (PR #18411)
      • fix CMake configs of Abseil (PR #18413)
      • fix regression in GCC 12.1 + 12.2 with wrong warnings (PR #18434)
      • fix installation of Python bindings for Arrow by adding --no-build-isolation to pip install command (PR #18348 + PR #18432 + PR #18348)
    • enhancements
      • enable support for libvori in CP2K v9.1 and v2022.1 (PR #18379)
    • (noteworthy) new software
      • see also https://github.com/easybuilders/easybuild-easyconfigs/pulls?q=is%3Apr+is%3Amerged+label%3Anew
      • Python-bundle-PyPI v2023.06, hatchling v1.18.0, virtualenv v20.23.1, cryptography, bcrypt (PR #18208)
        • see mermaid graph](https://mermaid.live/edit#pako:eNp9kzFvgzAQhf8K8lw6dGTolKVSpNLQoapYHPsIVoxtmXMqgvLfe4FIMQTCZN_77vz8LHomrASWsUrbP1Fzj8n3pjQJfXmHtTXpPhipIc27_CNJ0_dE-M6hPXju6u4peFIeA9dgTuvYK3E1R1FrZQ7PMWcBffecaYU6KqS60nIkHfe8UUc7ONoP3heExzuNpw3izF-krLetmLm3zsOJ4cVYRu-jtOt3ocXLo9ACBnJkdZt6IqYA6Xk_Jndrjf3fJq8Js8njtCX4GktVqWHhOkExt-DX8clNY-we0GIcsXxvysdnViag0u2kdlbuLS6ctdrHe9p64JJOgLhsRKALTEYVX1uFE-jndzaJAogrnw5MUWzZC2vAN1xJ-t_6K1AyrKGBkmW0lNwfS1aaC3E8oC06I1iGPsALC05yhI3ilFvDsorrFi7_ZbgxJg))
        • change in naming breaks user experience
          • we should have good documentation on this
          • where to park this in the EasyBuild docs?
            • separate page per toolchain generation?
          • should also mention Python-bundle approach
        • Python should have been named Python with bare versionsuffix
        • other option can be to inject a try_load statement in the Python module file, see https://github.com/easybuilders/JSC/blob/1e929863aaa7fa275363fac566feca239bf38bd1/Custom_Hooks/eb_hooks.py#L518
    • noteworthy software updates
      • see also https://github.com/easybuilders/easybuild-easyconfigs/pulls?q=is%3Apr+is%3Amerged+label%3Aupdate+
      • GCC 13.2.0 (PR #18417)
        • will probably be the base for the 2023b common toolchain generation
    • changes
      • ...
• work in progress
  • docs (open PRs + issues)
    • project board to perform yearly review cycle of all documentation pages: https://github.com/orgs/easybuilders/projects/17/views/1
    • ...
  • framework (open PRs + issues)
    • reported bugs / bug fixes
      • improve error when checksum dict has no entry for a file (PR #4150)
      • checksums.json support clutters log with false crash messages (issue #4301)
    • enhancements
      • implement poised hook to run after easyconfigs are parsed but before the build starts (PR #4304)
        • cfr. issue #4303
    • changes
      • don't ignore modules tool when using --fetch (PR #4299, fixes issue #4298)
    • EasyBuild 5.0 (to 5.0.x branch)
      • ...
  • easyblocks (open PRs + issues)
    • bug reports/fixes
      • MATLAB changes $LD_LIBRARY_PATH, breaks Qt apps (issue #2965)
    • enhancements
      • improve cpu-arch optimization settings for OpenCV (PR #2954)
      • add options to MesonNinja easyblock to customize build_cmd, install_cmd, builddir (PR #2963)
    • updates
      • update MXNet easyblock + don't try to install R extension by default (PR #2955)
      • ParMETIS will require significant changes in the easyblock (issue #2961)
      • update LLVM easyblock for LLVM v16: symlink third-party to third-party-<version>.src (PR #2970)
      • update scipy easyblock for scipy >= 1.11.0 (PR #2971)
      • update sanity check for Mesa >= 22.3 (PR #2973)
    • new easyblocks
      • add generic CargoPythonBundle easyblock (PR #2964)
      • add custom easyblock for sympy to fix issue in test step when tmpdir is a symlink (PR #2949)
    • changes
      • ...
    • EasyBuild 5.0 (to 5.0.x branch)
      • threaded mpi should be disabled (for SCOTCH) by default for all toolchains (issue #2972)
  • easyconfigs (open PRs + issues)
    • bug fixes/reports
      • ...
    • enhancements
      • ...
    • new software
      • ...
    • noteworthy software updates
      • SciPy-bundle with gfbf/2023a (PR #18442)
    • changes
      • use custom easyblock for sympy to prevent test failures (PR #18428)

Q&A

• Xavier: working on easyconfigs for latest common toolchain (2023a)
  • rule of thumb: try to not go beyond 10 easyconfigs per pull request
  • try to bundle easyconfig files that are "related" (provide dependencies on each other)
  • some scripts that can be useful when creating easyconfigs for new software versions, see https://github.com/easybuilders/easybuild-framework/tree/develop/easybuild/scripts
• ruamel.yaml requires lz4 (Python bindings) as dependency
  • lz4 easyconfig only provides C library, how to deal with Python bindings
  • may make sense to create a python-lz4 easyconfig to provide Python bindings