Conference call notes 20160316

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Notes on the 47th EasyBuild conference call, Wednesday March 16h 2016 (5pm - 5.30pm CEST)

Attendees

Alphabetical list of attendees (4):

• Damian Alvarez Mallon (JSC, Germany)
• Xavier Besseron (Uni.lu, Luxembourg)
• Kenneth Hoste (HPC-UGent, Belgium)
• Alan O'Cais (JSC, Germany)

Agenda

• EasyBuild v2.7.0
• extending the <year>[ab] naming scheme to toolchains other than foss/intel
  • see https://github.com/hpcugent/easybuild-easyconfigs/pull/2589
• potential topics for a 'Best Practices' section in the documentation

Notes

• EasyBuild v2.7.0

  • framework release notes: https://github.com/hpcugent/easybuild-framework/pull/1669/files
    • stable Cray support \o/
    • more responsive eb thanks to enabling Python optimisation mode (python -O/$PYTHONOPTIMIZE) in eb wrapper
    • improved GitHub integration (but --new-pr/--update-pr remain experimental for now)
    • fixed namespace warnings, which requires having setuptools available at runtime
    • EasyBuild now works in an environment where Python 3.x is the default python, if python2 is also available
    • --show-config, better --minimal-toolchains, %(*ver)s templates + HOME constant for easyconfigs, ...
  • easyblocks release notes: https://github.com/hpcugent/easybuild-easyblocks/pull/871/files
    • lots of enhancements w.r.t. MPICH, MVAPICH2, psmpi
    • use of find_flexlm_license in Intel*, PGI, TotalView easyblocks
    • some Cray-related enhancements
  • easyconfigs release notes are WIP

• 2016a version for gmpolf, gmvolf

  • cfr. https://github.com/hpcugent/easybuild-easyconfigs/pull/2589
  • stronger relationship with foss versioning: exact match with foss equivalent, except for MPI component
  • actually means something, as opposed to the random versioning used before (e.g. '7.1.2')
  • Xavier plans to reach out to MVAPICH2 team w.r.t. maintaining MVAPICH2 easyconfigs and archive of MVAPICH2 source tarballs
    • cfr. https://github.com/hpcugent/easybuild-easyconfigs/issues/973
  • psmpi-based toolchains in JSC also use 2016a, etc. but are not 'in sync' with intel equivalent (newer compiler version, etc.)
    • also not (yet) included in mainline repository

• best practices

  • document these at http://easybuild.readthedocs.org/
  • EasyBuild configuration
  • concept build sets in JSC
    • brief sections with pointers to existing documentation
  • maintaining per-site customisations [Xavier]
    • (no need for .ebp, see
  • setting up development environment for contributing back

• Alan: issue with --include-* with recent develop of framework

  • seems hard to reproduce on another system (Ubuntu), unit tests haven't triggered this issue
  • Kenneth: probably related to declare_namespace changes (cfr. https://github.com/hpcugent/easybuild-framework/pull/1591)
  • related to setuptools version being used?
    • if so, we can add a check for the minimal required setuptools version when --include-* is used