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Conference call notes 20251217

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Bart Oldeman edited this page Dec 17, 2025 · 5 revisions

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Notes on the 285th EasyBuild conference call, Wednesday 17 Dec 2025 (16:00 UTC / 17:00 CET)

Attendees

List of attendees (14):

  • Jorge Delgado Guerrero (University of Luxembourg)
  • Jasper Grimm (University of York, UK)
  • Alexander Grund (ZIH, Dresden, Germany)
  • Jorge Guerra Garcia (Universidad Politécnica de Madrid, Spain)
  • Georgios Kafanas (University of Luxembourg)
  • Vladislav Mogilev (Univ. of Birmingham, UK)
  • Sébastien Moretti (SIB, Switzerland)
  • Jurij Pečar (EMBL, Germany)
  • Andrea Piserchia (E4)
  • Jan Reuter (JSC, Germany)
  • Mikael Öhman (Chalmers University of Technology, Sweden)
  • Bart Oldeman (McGill, Calcul Québec, Digital Research Alliance Canada)
  • Åke Sandgren (Umeå University, Sweden)
  • Roberto Scipioni (Red Oak Consulting)
  • Bart Verheyde (UCB Pharmaceutical Manufacturing)

Agenda

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

Recent developments

  • latest EasyBuild release: EasyBuild v5.1.2 (26 Sept 2025)
  • next (stable) EasyBuild release: EasyBuid v5.2.0 (ETA: ASAP)
    • incl. support for LLVM-based toolchain, NVHPC toolchain, etc.
    • window of opportunity for merging PRs to be included in EasyBuild v5.2.0 has closed, 5.2.x branch created in framework for release.
    • one remaining blocking PR: (#3083). Alexander said there were no inherent showstoppers with this PR, it just needs testing.
    • planning to start regression test & start preparing release notes end of this week...

News

Merge sprints

  • Dec 15 merge sprint, open easyconfig PRs 575 -> 533.
  • future easyconfigs merge sprints planned:
    • Mon 16 Feb 2026
    • Mon 13 Apr 2026
    • Mon 15 Jun 2026
    • Mon 17 Aug 2026
    • aiming for semi-fixed schedule every other month: 3rd Monday in even months
  • at some point a sprint to revise & close outdated open issues

Merged PRs

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

  • blog/docs (merged PRs)

    • ...

  • framework (merged PRs)

    • enhancements
      • * Don't show command string again when showing in which folder it runs (PR #5003)
      • * make NVHPC a full toolchain with nvidia-compilers, NVHPCX, NVBLAS, and NVScaLAPACK (PR #4927)
      • * Add --keep-going option to fail at the end not at first failing installation + use proper exit code as determined by main function (PR #5022)
      • * Vendor copy of tomli-w 1.2.0, use it to implement dump_toml function in easybuild.tools.filetools (PR #5071)
      • * Vendor a copy of tomli in easybuild.tools.tomllib (PR #5063)
      • * allow f suffix in CUDA compute capabilities (PR #5067)
      • * Handle post_install_patches in GitHub uploads (PR #5016)
      • * Improve test report formatting (PR #5018)
      • * Add support for --disable-robot (PR #4781)
      • * Make command environment of shell commands more discoverable in the log (PR #4999)
      • * Remove escaping when converting EasyBuildError to a string (PR #5009)
      • * add search_path_vars_headers and search_path_vars_linker properties to Toolchain (PR #5031)
      • * deprecate support for running EasyBuild with Python < 3.9 (PR #4966)
      • * Implementing a new LLVM based toolchain (PR #5018)
      • * add custom GitHub Actions workflow to run tests with Python 3.6 in Ubuntu 20.04 container (PR #4790)
      • * Set $EASYBUILD environment variable to 'EasyBuild' to indicate that you're in an EasyBuild session (PR #5058)
    • bug fixes
      • * fix subtoolchains for nvompi + old NVHPC toolchains, and mark nvidia-compilers as optional subtoolchain since it's only used for recent NVHPC versions (PR #5073)
      • * Don't append empty component to start_dir in EasyBlock.guess_start_dir (PR #5057)
      • * Fix typo in EasyConfig.update error message (PR #5072)
      • * Add back CI for Python 3.6 by using pyenv (PR #5064)
      • * fix test_github_det_commit_status by using more recent commits (PR #5066)

  • easyblocks (merged PRs)

    • bug fixes
      • ...
    • enhancements

  • easyconfigs (merged PRs)

    • ~170 easyconfig PRs were merged since last conf call \o/
    • bug fixes/reports
      • ...

Open (active) PRs

PRs marked with (***) are considered blockers for releasing EasyBuild v5.2.0

  • *** Fix issues with PyTorch test-results (XML files) parsing and add tests (PR #5072)

  • blog/docs (open PRs + issues)

    • ...

  • framework (open PRs + issues)

    • ...

  • easyblocks (open PRs + issues)

    • bug fixes/reports

  • easyconfigs (open PRs + issues)

    • bug fixes/reports
      • ...
    • enhancements
      • ...
    • (noteworthy) new software
      • ...
    • software updates
      • ...
    • changes
      • ...

LLVM toolchain effort

  • framework & easyblock PRs have been battle-tested, and merged
  • specific issues, like individual test failures in math libraries on specific CPUs, will need to be followed up
  • problem with Autoconf, only pops up when using -march=native

Common toolchains

2026a

  • ETA early 2026
  • will likely use GCC 15.x as base
    • will be a bit painful because default C standard has been changed
  • being considered:
    • use zlib-ng instead of zlib across the board
      • introduce detection for using zlib dependency in easyconfigs test suite

Q&A / other

  • Bart Verheyde: (RELION, see PR #19678). This PR compiled for him with foss/2023a so he was wondering why it wasn't merged, and if it can be updated for 2025b toolchains. Jasper replied he's been working on an updated PR based on this old PR for RELION, but he's been waiting on the new PyTorch with CUDA, and the easyconfig will be simpler now that we have the Dataset easyblock. He thinks he can open a new PR in 2026.

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