Skip to content

Conference call notes 20260114

Jump to bottom
Kenneth Hoste edited this page Jan 14, 2026 · 1 revision

(back to Conference calls)

Notes on the 286th EasyBuild conference call, Wednesday 14 Jan 2026 (16:00 UTC / 17:00 CET)

Attendees

List of attendees (22):

  • Sebastian Achilles (JSC, Germany)
  • Jorge Delgado Guerrero (University of Luxembourg)
  • Loris Ercole (CECAM)
  • Davide Grassano (CECAM)
  • Jasper Grimm (University of York, UK)
  • Alexander Grund (ZIH, Dresden, Germany)
  • Leonardo Honfi Camilo (Wageningen University, The Netherlands)
  • Kenneth Hoste (HPC-UGent)
  • Adam Huffman (University of Oxford, UK)
  • Georgios Kafanas (University of Luxembourg)
  • Kurt Lust (UAntwerpen & LUMI User Support Team)
  • Vladislav Mogilev (Univ. of Birmingham, UK)
  • Sam Moors (Vrije Universiteit Brussel, Belgium)
  • Sébastien Moretti (SIB, Switzerland)
  • Alan O'Cais (freelancer)
  • Mikael Öhman (Chalmers University of Technology, Sweden)
  • Bart Oldeman (McGill, Calcul Québec, Digital Research Alliance Canada)
  • Andrea Piserchia (E4)
  • Jan Reuter (JSC, Germany)
  • Thomas Röbliz (Univ. of Bergen, Norway)
  • Jörg Saßmannshausen (Imperial College London, UK)
  • James Simone (Fermilab, Chicago, US)
    • using EasyBuild to install software on LatticeQCD clusters at Fermilab
    • also interested in EESSI

Agenda

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

Recent developments

  • latest EasyBuild release: EasyBuild v5.2.0 (23 Dec 2025)
  • next (stable) EasyBuild release: EasyBuid v5.2.1
    • ETA: mid Feb'26

News

  • 11th EasyBuild User Meeting: 21-23 April 2026 @ Portugal, see https://easybuild.io/eum26
    • registration will be opened soon
    • starting to puzzle together draft agenda, ideas/suggestions welcome!
  • EasyBuild User Survey
    • coming soon...
  • remote attendance will be possible
  • ideas for talks
    • EESSI build-and-deploy bot

Merge sprints

  • 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  • at some point a sprint to revise & close outdated open issues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 latest EasyBuild stable release)

  • blog/docs (merged PRs)

    • ...

  • framework (merged PRs)

    • bug fixes
      • Pass correct -march option on RISC-V systems when optarch toolchain option is enabled (PR #5029)
      • Ignore stderr for rocm-smi during test report creation (PR #5087)
    • enhancements
      • Include full shell command that failed in raised error (PR #5074)
      • Improve error reporting for failures in eb --merge-pr and similar (PR #5076)
    • changes
      • Don't show command string again when showing in which folder it runs (PR #5003)
      • Extend list of easyconfig parameters that extensions should not inherit: sources, patches, checksums, skipsteps (PR #5075)
      • Add line breaks in log for run-shell-cmd environment (PR #5078)
    • code cleanup
      • Replace use of datetime.utcfromtimestamp which is deprecated since Python 3.12 (PR #5091)
    • CI/test suite
      • ...
    • other
      • ...

  • easyblocks (merged PRs)

    • bug fixes
      • Fix issues with PyTorch test-results (XML files) parsing and add tests (PR #3803)
      • Be more careful with PATH-like environment variables when using buildenv + use pushenv for other environment variables (PR #4007)
      • enhance LLVM easyblock to fix tests not finding GCCcore libraries (PR #4010)
      • enhance OpenBabel easyblock to re-create install dir (which may already exist) in prepare step (PR #4013)
      • only consider stdout when checking config.guess in ConfigureMake easyblock (PR #4020)
      • fix logic in Cargo easyblock to determine value for 'finalpath' after extracting sources (PR #4022)
      • Fix MesonNinja easyblock to avoid ninja using all CPUs when only 1 is requested (PR #4023)
      • disable FlexiBLAS backends that are in the list of filtered dependencies (PR #4031)
    • enhancements
      • refactor NVHPC easyblock into generic NvidiaBase easyblock, and custom easyblocks for nvidia-compilers + NVHPC (PR #3788)
      • enhance easyblock to support building with LLVM toolchain
      • add -DCACHE_SECTOR_SIZE_READONLY when building BLIS for A64FX (PR #3938)
      • enhance GROMACS easyblock to provide more control over building gmxapi Python package (PR #3982)
      • update binutils easyblock to handle libzstd in binutils 2.40+ (PR #3966)
      • Allow FlexiBLAS to link to MKL with LLVM (PR #3997)
      • extend ignore patterns for LLVM tests on aarch64 (PR #4014)
      • Allow using PythonPackage as extension in Conda easyblock (PR #4015)
      • enhance Cargo easyblock to merge Cargo.toml file with workspace file (PR #4016)
      • Make NCL easyblock compatible with oneAPI intel compilers (PR #4017)
      • allow oversubscription in sanity check for OpenFOAM (PR #4019)
      • allow to enable more components in Extrae (PR #4027)
      • add fallback architecture for zen5 to BLIS easyblock (PR #4034)
    • updates
      • Update jaxlib easyblock for jax 0.6.2 with CUDA-12.6.0 (PR #3951)
      • Update GAMESS easyblock for 20240715-R2 (PR #3990)
      • update custom easyblock for Trilinos to reflect changes in version 16 (PR #4011)
      • update OpenFOAM easyblock to skip build of plugins for OpenFOAM v2412, since it's missing in source tarball (PR #4025)
    • changes
      • ...
    • new
    • code cleanup
      • ...
    • CI
      • ...

  • easyconfigs (merged PRs)

    • ~XXX easyconfig PRs were merged since last conf call \o/
    • bug fixes/reports
      • consistently use patch to correctly detect Slurm job environment for jax v0.6.2 and v0.7.0 (PR #24447)
      • add patch to fix parfor buildmap in numba v0.60.0 (PR #24946)
      • add patch for RISC-V build issue to libfabric 2.0.0 easyconfig (PR #25035)
      • Fix HDF5_DIR in HDF5-1.14.6 easyconfigs (PR #25041)
      • add patches to hwloc v2.12.1 to better handle ACPI CPCC (PR #25043)
        • fixes slow MPI startup (MPI_Init) when lots of MPI ranks are used per node
        • may need to be backported to older hwloc versions as well (w/ GCCcore 14.2 toolchain)
    • enhancements
      • add xcb-error-utils component to X11 20250608 (PR #25026)
      • Add dRiftDM v0.3.1 to R-bundle-CRAN 2025.11 (PR #25024)
    • (noteworthy) new software
      • ...
    • noteworthy software updates
      • SciPy-bundle v2023.12 w/ iimkl/2023b (PR #20262)
      • R-bundle-Bioconductor v3.22 w/ foss/2025b (PR #24469)
    • cleanup
      • ...
    • changes

Open (active) PRs

  • blog/docs (open PRs + issues)

    • ...

  • framework (open PRs + issues)

    • bugs
      • Fix check_checksums when using templates, patch-dicts or checksums.json (PR #5021)
      • Building easyconfigs with many extensions is much slower with EasyBuild 5.x than with EasyBuild 4.x (issue #5052)
      • CUDA sanity check is not run on installations of CUDA itself (issue #5084)
      • Adding --robot paths causes search to fail for specific easyconfigs (issue #5085)
      • Use initially stored environment to determine GPU info for test reports (PR #5088)
        • fix for issue #5086: EasyBuild does not unload modules before creating / uploading test report
      • Fix initialization order in ModulesTool, tests and don't set $LMOD_REDIRECT='no' (PR #5079)
      • Add back easybuild.toolchains.compiler.nvhpc (PR #5089)
    • enhancements
      • Add --debug-module-cmds option (PR #5045)
      • pick up on config.cfg EasyBuild configuration file in current working directory (PR #5054)
    • code cleanup
      • ...
    • changes
      • Switch to setuptools and find_packages (issue #5065)
      • Don't install test.framework package (PR #5070)
      • Switch to PEP517 build process & pyproject.toml (issue #5090)
        • doesn't actually break anything since EasyBuild itself doesn't have any 3rd party
      • Deprecate print_error function and replace it with new print_error_and_exit function (PR #5092)
    • CI/test suite
      • ...

  • easyblocks (open PRs + issues)

    • bug fixes/reports
      • fix compatibility of ROOT easyblock with search-path-cpp-headers option (PR #3973)
      • transfer dependencies in Bundle easyblock and fix sanity check for module only (PR #4037)
        • required for ROCm-LLVM
      • Kokkos and LAMMPS fail the CUDA CC sanity check (PR #4036)
      • buildenv EasyBlock incorrectly sets PATH on --module-only and crashes on --sanity-check-only (issue #4040)
    • enhancements
      • enhance GROMACS easyblock to improve control over PLUMED support (native vs. patching) (PR #3984)
      • Create lockfile for Cargo package if missing (PR #3995)
      • avoid incorrect symlinks for NVHPC by force-setting selected CUDA version in install script (PR #4024)
    • updates
      • Update CP2K easyblock for v2024 and v2025 (PR #3892)
      • Changes to LLVM easyblock required for LLVM 21 (PR #3902)
      • enhance GROMACS easyblock to add support for optarch X86-64-V? notation (PR #3981)
      • Remove ``--force` option from generic Conda easyblock, was removed in Conda 24.3 (PR #4035)
    • changes
      • Make CargoPythonPackage the default class for extensions/components of CargoPythonBundle (PR #3993)
      • Explictly call PythonPackage and Cargo configure step in CargoPythonPackage easyblock (PR #3996)
      • Always setup config for vendored crates in Cargo easyblock (PR #4018)
    • code cleanup
      • Enable flake8-comprehension code style check and fix issues (PR #3989)
    • new easyblocks
      • ...

  • easyconfigs (open PRs + issues)

    • bug fixes/reports
      • ...
    • enhancements
      • ...
    • (noteworthy) new software
      • ROCm-LLVM v19.0.0 w/ ROCm 6.4.1 (PR #23304)
    • software updates
      • PyTorch v2.3.0 w/ foss/2023b + CUDA 12.4.0 (PR #23553)
      • PyTorch v2.6.0 w/ foss/2024a + CUDA 12.6.0 (PR #23433)
      • PyTorch v2.7.1 w/ foss/2024a + CUDA 12.6.0 (PR #23923)
      • CP2K v2025.2 w/ foss/2025a (PR #23696)
    • changes
      • ...

PyTorch working group

  • notes on meeting on 12 Dec'25 available here

Common toolchains

  • {foss/intel/lfoss}/{2026a,2026b} (as usual) or only {foss/intel/lfoss}/2026 (one toolchain per year)?

{foss,intel,lfoss}/2026(a)

  • using GCC 15.2 as base
    • will be a bit painful because default C standard has been changed...
    • see also
  • relevant PRs tagged with 2026a label
    • easyconfigs required up to LLVM 21.1.8
    • some trouble with Python
  • being considered:
    • use zlib-ng instead of zlib across the board
      • introduce detection for using zlib dependency in easyconfigs test suite
    • proposal by Jan in https://github.com/easybuilders/easybuild-easyconfigs/pull/24999
      • zlib which is actually zlib-ng underneath
      • mainly done to avoid that easyblocks have to be updated to be made aware of zlib-ng (like binutils)
      • could also set $EBROOTZLIB in zlib-ng module
      • --zlib-compat in zlib-ng is required for stuff that are not aware zlib-ng yet
    • Tcl can't be built on top of zlib-ng
      • at least not without minizip-ng
      • workaround available (same as in Fedora), see PR #25005
    • trouble with test in Python 3.14, infinite recursion test based on stack size, eventually runs out of memory

Q&A / other

  • Mikael: experiments with Wayland, have been full hardware acceleration, 3d remote desktop with XFCE w/ full Wayland support
    • see PR #24369
    • lots of dependencies, should probably look into bundles of stuff (similar to X11 bundle)
    • more test reports are welcome in PR 24369
    • would be interesting talk at EUM'26
  • Sam: can we start requiring "official" name Python packages installed as extensions as used in PyPI?
    • follow-up to framework PR #4943
    • we should implement a CI check for this?
      • or could enhance sanity check for PythonPackage to verify name with what pip list produces?
    • maybe we should also favor wheel for pure Python packages

Clone this wiki locally