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Conference call notes 20250813

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Kenneth Hoste edited this page Aug 13, 2025 · 1 revision

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Notes on the 276th EasyBuild conference call, Wednesday 13 Aug 2025 (08:00 UTC / 10:00 CEST)

Attendees

List of attendees (19):

  • Simon Branford (Univ. of Birmingham, UK)
  • Bibek Chapagain (Barcelona Supercomputing Centre, Spain)
  • Loris Ercole (CECAM, Switzerland)
  • Alexander Grund (ZIH, Dresden, Germany)
  • Leonardo Honfi Camilo (Wageningen University, The Netherlands)
  • Kenneth Hoste (HPC-UGent, Belgium)
  • Adam Huffman (University of Oxford, UK)
  • Georgios Kafanas (University of Luxembourg)
  • Kurt Lust (UAntwerpen / LUMI)
  • Sébastien Moretti (SIB, Switzerland)
  • Mikael Öhman (Chalmers University of Technology, Sweden)
  • Jurij Pečar (EMBL, Germany)
  • Lara Peeters (HPC-UGent, Belgium)
  • Steffen Reichert (TU Dresden)
  • Jan Reuter (JSC, Germany)
  • Jörg Saßmannshausen (Imperial College London, UK)
  • Åke Sandgren (Umeå University, Sweden)
  • Roberto Scipioni (Red Oak Consulting, UK)
  • Helena Vela (Do It Now)

Agenda

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

Recent developments

  • latest EasyBuild release: EasyBuild v5.1.1 (6 July 2025)
  • next (stable) EasyBuild release:
    • EasyBuid v5.1.2 bugfix release (ETA: end of Aug'25)
    • EasyBuid v5.2.0 feature release (ETA: Sept'25)

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 every other month: 3rd Monday in even months

Merged PRs

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

  • blog/docs (merged PRs)

  • framework (merged PRs)

    • bug fixes
      • test if all extensions support parallel install before attempting parallel extension install (PR #4949)
      • Do not fail for read-only installation directory on --module-only (re)builds (PR #4958)
      • Fix error when adding files to existing PR with --update-pr and refactor + fixes in options tests (PR #4962)
      • Fix RPATH wrapper by detecting & replacing -Xlinker --enable-new-dtags (PR #4970)
      • Honor --disable-module-extensions configuration option (PR #4971)
    • enhancements
      • Add support for "extensions" on Tcl modulefiles (PR #4972 + PR #4973)
      • Exit with appropriate error code for --search when no match is found (PR #4976)
    • changes
      • ...
    • code cleanup
      • ...
    • CI/test suite
      • only run tests for --from-commit for subset of test configurations (those for which a GitHub token is available) (PR #4967)

  • easyblocks (merged PRs)

    • bug fixes
      • add explicit enabling/disabling of libffi with custom paths in LLVM easyblock (PR #3849)
      • add back configure options for PETSc dependencies with generic --with options (PR #3857)
      • use --COPTFLAGS/--CXXOPTFLAGS/--FOPTFLAGS instead of (undocumented) --CFLAGS/--CXXFLAGS/--FFLAGS as configure option for PETSc (PR #3863)
      • use sanity_check_load_module in sanity check step of custom easyblock for pybind11 (PR #3864)
      • Respect --ignore-test-failure and --skip-test-step for Perl extensions (PR #3865)
      • Fix sanity-check-only for custom easyblock for installing EasyBuild (PR #3871)
      • Allow sysroot for minimal builds for LLVM versions < 19 (PR #3880)
        • mostly relevant for EESSI
    • enhancements
      • update LLVM easyblock to fix build on RISC-V systems and ignore a bunch of tests (PR #3676)
      • Add option to CMakeMake to specify name of build directory (PR #3786)
      • Explicitely set OMPT options for LLVM (PR #3853)
      • enhance FlexiBLAS easyblock to support NVPL library (PR #3866)
      • enhance Python easyblock to handle Tcl/Tk 9.0+ with external libtommath (PR #3867)
      • enhance custom easyblock for LLVM to run tests in parallel (PR #3875)
      • add sanity check to link system libraries to LLVM easyblock (PR #3877)
      • Allow oversubscription for FFTW tests, also for OpenMPI-5.X onwards (PR #3884)
    • updates
      • Update Amber easyblock for AmberTools >= 24.x (PR #3868)
      • update sanity check in custom easyblock for MUMPS to support v5.8.0 and higher (PR #3879)
    • changes
      • Deprecate the Clang Easyblock in favor of the LLVM one for newer (>=18.1.6) versions of LLVM (PR #3746)
      • Increase the default for the maximum number of failed PyTorch tests to 10 (PR #3869)
    • CI
      • ...

  • easyconfigs (merged PRs)

    • ~75 easyconfig PRs were merged since last conf call
    • bug fixes/reports
      • disable flaky LWP::Simple test in Perl (PRs #23564, #23565)
      • fix installation of xtb 6.7.1 w/ gfbf/2023b by adding missing dependencies (mctc-lib, tblite, mstore, numsa, CPCM-X, dftd4, Simple-DFTD3) (PR #23575)
      • Add missing libxml2 and zstd dependencies to LLVM easyconfigs (PRs #23608, #23610, #23611)
    • enhancements
      • ...
    • (noteworthy) new software
      • ...
    • noteworthy software updates
      • GCC 15.2.0 (PR #23604)
        • base for 2026a common toolchains? (unless GCC 15.3.0 is released in time)
      • CUDA 13.0.0 (PR #23576)
        • drops support for V100 GPUs
        • breaking changes in API
        • needs a sufficient recent GPU driver version (>= 580)
        • CUDA 12.9.1 will be main CUDA version used in 2025b generation
          • (Jan) JSC will divert from this for JUPITER/JURECA/JUWELS Booster and use CUDA 13.0.0 (will try via a hook)
    • cleanup
      • ...
    • changes
      • Remove max_failed_tests in PyTorch easyconfigs where the used value was less or equal to the default (PR #23577)

Open (active) PRs

  • blog (open PRs + issues)

    • add blog post about reproducible tarballs (PR #9)
    • add blog post on interactive shell and debugging build failures (PR #11)

  • docs (open PRs + issues)

  • framework (open PRs + issues)

    • bugs
      • Fix f-string in RPATH check and skip check for linked libs on symlinks (PR #4975)
      • add test for passing command as list of strings to run_shell_cmd (WIP PR #4977)
    • enhancements
      • make specifying exts_defaultclass optional (PR #4800)
      • implementing a new LLVM based toolchain (PR #4914)
      • proposed changes to make EasyBuild plugin-able through entrypoints (PR #4918)
      • make NVHPC a full toolchain with nvidia-compilers, NVHPCX and NVBLAS (PR #4927)
      • click CLI wrapper around normal CLI (PR #4961)
    • code cleanup
      • ...
    • changes
      • empty install dir but don't remove it (PR #4932)
      • Don't log variables (un)set when cleaning up fake module (PR #4942)
      • deprecate support for running EasyBuild with Python < 3.9 (PR #4966)
        • feedback?
        • uv is very helpful here, we should mention that in our documentation

  • easyblocks (open PRs + issues)

    • bug fixes/reports
      • remove duplicated output of test command from PythonPackage easyblock (PR #3859)
      • Unify handling of vendored crates in cargo EasyBlock and add support for non-virtual workspaces (PR #3665)
      • Only consider explicit dependencies in LLVM easyblock (PR #3881)
      • Disable LLVM OpenMP tests using Thread sanitizer if requested (PR #3883)
      • Explicitly set LAPACK/BLAS to FlexiBLAS if present in OpenCV (PR #3874) -Potentially wrong cblas.h in OpenBLAS installations with 64bit support (issue #3872)
    • enhancements
      • enhance custom easyblock for NCCL so it defines $NCCL_HOME in generated module file #3782 (PR #3782)
      • enhance LAMMPS easyblock (PR #3784)
      • Add test for PyTorch test-results (XML files) parsing (PR #3803)
      • update torchvision easyblock for libwebp support (PR #3882)
      • Avoid writes to $HOME from Triton during PyTorch tests by setting $TRITON_HOME (PR #3876)
    • updates
      • Update Mathematica easyblock to support versions > 14.1 (PR #3707)
      • update ORCA easyblock for version 6.1.0 (PR #3796)
      • Update jaxlib easyblock for jax/jaxlib v0.6.2 (PR #3852)
      • Update test step of CP2K easyblock for v2024 + add custom easyconfig parameters to control CP2K test suite parameters (PR #3862)
    • changes
      • stick to NEON when building GROMACS on ARM CPUs, even when SVE is supported (PR #3870)
    • code cleanup
      • ...
    • new easyblocks
      • add custom easyblock to build & install ROCm components (PR #3861)
      • New EasyBlock for ROCm-LLVM (PR #3823)

  • easyconfigs (open PRs + issues)

    • bug fixes/reports
      • ...
    • enhancements
      • ...
    • (noteworthy) new software
      • ROCm-LLVM v6.4.1 (PR #23304)
        • tested extensively by Jan, ready for review/merge
      • Add easyconfigs for ROCm 6.4.1 using ROCm-LLVM toolchain (PR #23542)
    • software updates
      • PyTorch v2.3.0 w/ foss/2023b + CUDA 12.4.0 (PR #23553)
        • should be ready to merge
      • PyTorch v2.6.0 w/ CUDA 12.6.0 (PR #23433)
        • some trouble with Triton version for this
      • CP2K v2025.2 w/ foss/2025a (PR #23593)
      • WRF 4.7.1, WPS 4.6.0 w/ foss/2025a (PR #23638)
      • GROMACS v2025.2 (PR #23566)
    • changes
      • ...

2025b common toolchains

Q&A / others

  • (Jörg) ORCA mentioned that they prefer sticking to OpenMPI 4.x due to performance issues with OpenMPI 5.x
  • (Alexander) seeing problems with CUDA version being used for PyTorch 2.7
  • (Mikael) PMIx 5.0.8 + Slurm is trouble, hang in MPI_Init
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