Conference call notes 20170104

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Notes on the 67th EasyBuild conference call, Wednesday January 4th 2017 (5pm - 6pm CET)

Attendees

Alphabetical list of attendees (6):

• Pablo Escobar (UniBas, Switzerland)
• Fotis Georgatos (Illumina, UK)
• Kenneth Hoste (HPC-UGent, Belgium)
• Adam Huffman (Francis Crick Institute, UK)
• Alan O'Cais (JSC, Germany)
• Robert Schmidt (OHRI, Canada)

Agenda

• final definition for foss/2017a and intel/2017a common toolchains
• upcoming releases: EasyBuild v3.0.3, EasyBuild v3.1.0
• long-term goals in 2017
• Q&A

Notes

2017a toolchains

• foss/2017a WIP PR: https://github.com/hpcugent/easybuild-easyconfigs/pull/3968

  • requires https://github.com/hpcugent/easybuild-easyblocks/pull/1077 for flex 2.6.3
  • still using LAPACK 3.6.1 because of problems with LAPACK 3.7.0 in combination with OpenBLAS 0.2.19
    • cfr. https://github.com/xianyi/OpenBLAS/issues/1042
  • still using OpenMPI 2.0.2rc2, should be updated to final 2.0.2 release (once it's there)

• intel/2017a WIP PR: https://github.com/hpcugent/easybuild-easyconfigs/pull/3969

EasyBuild v3.0.3

• minor release that includes 2017a common toolchains

EasyBuild v3.1.0

• feature release, with (slightly) enhanced framework

Long-term goals in 2017

• more frequent minor releases (cfr. v3.0.x)
• (stable) support for fat .yeb easyconfigs
  • initially only fat w.r.t toolchains
  • Rob: also related to more flexible dependency resolution?
  • Alan: could help with mapping one toolchain to another, porting software stacks across multiple systems
• better support for site-specific customisations
  • e.g., tweaking of OpenMPI configuration
• make it easier to pick up tools/libraries from the OS
  • mostly for compilers & MPI
  • MPI because of tuning
  • compilers because they may be provided by the vendor
  • does Spack support picking up MPI libraries from the system like it does for compilers?
• integration with Singularity
  • can be extended to other tools like Docker, Nix, etc.
  • two-fold integration:
    • build in isolation by running EasyBuild inside a container
    • use EasyBuild to create Singularity images
      • downside is that you need the toolchain in each image? maybe not...
• Alan: support for instrumentation (e.g., Score-P)
  • implementation is similar to how ccache support is implemented?
• stable support for RPATH
  • actually short-term, almost stable?
  • Pablo is almost using it in production
  • need to opt-out for some easyconfigs, mostly for stuff including own CMake, libraries in tarball
• Fotis: integration with CI?
  • see work done at CSCS with Jenkins & EB
  • PROVA: https://prova.io
  • document list of use cases of how EasyBuild is leveraged
  • how to prioritise builds to speed up or deliver the critical/interesting stuff first
  • web interface to show results, e.g. CDash
    • see also http://cdash.uni.lu/
    • test CDash setup for Spack: https://cdash.cern.ch/

Other

• agenda for EUM should be updated to include site presentations,
• Adam: joint effort to update common tools & libraries together with common toolchains?
  • already done for Python 2/3, Perl, R
  • wider effort for e.g. bioinformatics shortly after first EasyBuild release that includes updated common toolchains?