Conference call notes 20171108

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Notes on the 89th EasyBuild conference call, Wednesday November 8th 2017 (5pm - 6pm CEST)

Attendees

Alphabetical list of attendees (6):

• Damian Alvarez (JSC, Germany)
• Markus Geimer (JSC, Germany)
• Fotis Georgatos (Illumina, UK)
• Kenneth Hoste (HPC-UGent, Belgium)
• Adam Huffman (Big Data Institute, University of Oxford)
• Bart Oldeman (McGill University, Canada)

Agenda

• outlook to next EasyBuild release (v3.4.2 or v3.5.0)
• update on labels for issues & pull requests
• discussion on more flexibility for dependency versions
  • cfr. discussion in https://github.com/easybuilders/easybuild-easyconfigs/pull/5203
• Q&A

Notes

Next EasyBuild release

• v3.4.2 if it happens in next few weeks
• v3.5.0 if it only happens in December
• important recent updates in develop:
  • support for --preview-pr
  • easyblock for building & installing Bazel
    • KH is also working on easyblock for TensorFlow...
    • based on Guilherme's work @ https://github.com/easybuilders/easybuild-easyconfigs/pull/4412 + available notes from different sources
  • enhancements to CP2K easyblock (& more coming...)
  • easyconfigs for intel/2017.09 & intel/2018.00
  • bug fixes & software updates + a couple of new software packages
    • see labeled merged PRs @ https://github.com/easybuilders/easybuild-easyconfigs/milestone/45?closed=1

Labels for issues & PRs

• see https://github.com/easybuilders/easybuild-framework/labels
• currently in exploratory phase
• should help with getting clearer view based on merged PRs
• priority labels not used yet, may change in future
  • bug report & bug fix labels imply higher priority

More flexible dependency versions

• see also common deps
  • conda already has this concept
  • cfr. https://github.com/bioconda/bioconda-recipes/blob/master/scripts/env_matrix.yml
• flexibility could be added, but will also raise other problems
  • cfr. complexity in Spack to concretize specs
• Markus: different use cases (cfr. discussion at first hackathon)
  • being more relaxed on build deps (e.g. CMake, libraries, ...)
    • but version would still be fixed in generated module & dumped easyconfig
  • silently update deps (e.g. Java)
    • may still require to re-build whatever depends on it (especially with RPATH, static linking, etc.)
• another option is to support a configuration option to fix dependency versions, e.g. --fix-dep-versions=zlib:1.2.11,...
• could/should be discussed at next EB User Meeting...

Other

• various OpenFOAM variants
  • OpenFOAM (.org) & OpenFOAM-Extend variants are already supported
    • openfoam.org variant: https://github.com/easybuilders/easybuild-easyconfigs/tree/master/easybuild/easyconfigs/o/OpenFOAM
    • foam-extend variant: https://github.com/easybuilders/easybuild-easyconfigs/tree/master/easybuild/easyconfigs/o/OpenFOAM-Extend
  • PR for .com variant at https://github.com/easybuilders/easybuild-easyconfigs/pull/4814
  • latest version of EB_OpenFOAM easyblock supports all three variants
    • thanks to https://github.com/easybuilders/easybuild-easyblocks/pull/1272