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Conference call notes 20250716

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Alex Domingo edited this page Jul 16, 2025 · 1 revision

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Notes on the 274th EasyBuild conference call, Wednesday 16 July 2025 (08:00 UTC / 10:00 CEST)

Attendees

List of attendees (11):

  • Alex Domingo (Vrije Universiteit Brussel, Belgium)
  • Jörg Saßmannshausen (Imperial College London, UK)
  • Cintia Willemyns (Vrije Universiteit Brussel, Belgium)
  • Davide Grassano (CECAM)
  • Adam Huffman (University of Oxford, UK)
  • Georgios Kafanas (ULHPC)
  • Kurt Lust (UAntwerpen / LUMI)
  • Alexander Strube
  • Helena Vela (HPCNow)
  • Leonardo Honfi
  • Jasper Grimm

Agenda

  • overview of recent developments
  • 2025a update of common toolchains
  • Q&A

Recent developments

  • latest EasyBuild release: EasyBuild v5.1.1 (06 Jul 2025)
  • next (stable) EasyBuild release: EasyBuid v5.1.2 (ETA: soonish)

News

  • future easyconfigs merge sprints planned:
    • Mon 18 Aug 2025
    • Mon 13 Oct 2025
    • Mon 15 Dec 2025
    • Mon 16 Feb 2026
    • aiming for semi-fixed schedule: 3rd Monday in even months

Merged PRs

(changed made in PRs marked with * are included latest EasyBuild stable release)

  • blog/docs (merged PRs)

    • Mikael will look into blog post on EasyBuild LSP
    • Alex will look into blog post on reproducibly creating source tarballs from Git repositories

  • framework (merged PRs)

    • bug fixes
      • also copy patches of extensions to easybuild subdirectory of installation directory (PR #4939)
      • store all patches (incl the ones for extensions) that need to be copied to a repo/reprod dir in an all_patches set (PR #4960)
      • do not determine number of iterations in easyblock constructor (which is too early), but in run_all_steps (PR #4952)
    • enhancements
      • Add required option to EasyConfig.get_cuda_cc_template_value method (PR #4954)
    • changes
      • ...
    • code cleanup
      • ...
    • CI/test suite
      • fix broken tests for GitHub integration features (PR #4913)

  • easyblocks (merged PRs)

    • bug fixes

      • Moved several pieces of logic from the __init__ to configure_step in LLVM easyblock (PR #3781)
      • fix configuration option for OpenMP offload target + logic in sanity check step in LLVM easyblock (PR #3755)
      • Don't install libomp aliases by default in LLVM easyblock (PR #3825)
      • use property for gcc_prefix/gcc_root in LLVM easyblock (PR #3793)
      • leanup GCC-related options for full-LLVM build (PR #3827)
      • disable UCX signal catching in Java (PR #3832)
      • don't use non-existing --enable-sve configure option when building FFTW on Arm system that supports SVE (PR #3696)
      • Add missing call to make_module_step for components in Bundle easyblock (PR #3801)

    • enhancements

      • symlink CUPTI files to standard locations in CUDA installation (PR #3832)

    • updates

      • ...

    • changes

      • remove default separate_build_dir = True in elsi.py (PR #3838)
      • remove default separate_build_dir = True in aramdillo.py (PR #3836)
      • remove default separate_build_dir and update GPU target in DualSPhysics (PR #3835)

    • CI

      • ...

  • easyconfigs (merged PRs)

    • XXX easyconfig PRs were merged since last conf call
    • bug fixes/reports
      • ...
    • enhancements
      • ...
    • (noteworthy) new software
      • ...
    • noteworthy software updates
      • ...
    • cleanup
      • ...
    • changes
      • ...

Open (active) PRs

  • docs (open PRs + issues)

  • framework (open PRs + issues)

    • bugs
      • Correctly detect final path when extracting multiple tarballs (PR #4922)
      • Fix logic for pr_repo used in --sync-pr-with-develop (PR #4947)
    • enhancements
      • Proposed changes to make EasyBuild plugin-able through entrypoints (PR #4918)
        • only works with Python 3.9+
        • we should deprecate support for running EasyBuild on top of Python <3.9
      • make NVHPC a full toolchain with nvidia-compilers, NVHPCX and NVBLAS (PR #4927)
      • introduce XORG_*_URLS and GNU_FTP_URLS template constants (PR #4935)
      • retry fetching extensions from PyPI with alternative download_filename (PR #4943)
    • code cleanup
      • ...
    • changes
      • empty install dir but don't remove it (PR #4932)

  • easyblocks (open PRs + issues)

    • bug fixes/reports
      • Moving openmp to a runtime in newer versions of LLVM (PR #3799)
      • Installing libiberty via binutils flag --enable-install-libiberty can break lib64 symlink (issue #3804)
      • move libiberty.a binutils library to 'lib' subdirectory if it's the only file in 'lib64' subdirectory (PR #3822)
    • enhancements
      • Changes to Easyblocks needed to work with the new LLVM toolchain (PR #3759)
      • Set $NCCL_HOME in NCCL easyblock (PR #3782)
      • Show status of component installation (Bundle easyblock) (PR #3783)
      • enhance LAMMPS easyblock to select best performing FFT library (PR #3784)
      • Add option to CMakeMake to specify name of build directory (PR #3786)
      • add option to run unittests of LAMMPS (PR #3789)
      • Add test for PyTorch test-results (XML files) parsing (PR #3803)
    • updates
      • Update TensorFlow easyblock for CUDA support in TensorFlow 2.18+ (PR #3765)
      • update ORCA easyblock for version 6.1.0 (PR #3796)
    • changes
      • Deprecate the Clang Easyblock in Favor of the LLVM one for newer (>=18.1.6) versions of LLVM (PR #3746)
    • code cleanup
      • ...
    • new easyblocks
      • new easyblock for vscodeextension (PR #3802)

  • easyconfigs (open PRs + issues)

    • ~650 open easyconfig PRs \o/
    • bug fixes/reports
      • ...
    • enhancements
      • ...
    • (noteworthy) new software
      • ...
    • software updates
    • changes
      • ...

2025b common toolchains

  • will likely be set in stone Aug/Sept'25
  • GCC 14.3.0 (PR #22942) will be the base for foss/2025b and intel/2025b

Q&A / others

  • (Jorg) PETSc not building with MUMPS

    • checked version in 2023a and it seems to properly link to MUMPS
    • maybe it's something that was fixed "recently", working build from 2025-02

  • (Alexandre) Installing PyTorch from wheels due to fast release cycle. We should consider moving away from compiling PyTorch, very little to be gained. Most performance critical code runs on external libs

    • Alex: idea to have an easyconfig from wheels as a quick stopgap solutions, then we could build all ecosystem on top and then in the future replace with optimized build from source
    • Jorg: do the new versions of PyTorch work with IPv6?
    • Alexander: you need to look at NCCL, which is the one handling network comms
    • Alex: have we ever benchmarked PyTorch from EB vs wheels?
    • Kurt: there was once an issue with maybe TensorFlow? which was slower due to combination of options used in EB
    • Alex: will open an issue to have PyTorch from wheel benchamarked and setup proposed with automatic transition to optimized one

  • (Jorg) LavaVu fails to build: https://github.com/easybuilders/easybuild-easyconfigs/pull/23423

    • Part of the codebase is a C++ plugin that gets installed alongside the python module
    • error in the sanity check is due to those C++ wrapper being missing
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