Conference call notes 20160511

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Notes on the 51th EasyBuild conference call, Wednesday May 11th 2016 (5pm - 5.30pm CEST)

Attendees

Alphabetical list of attendees (5):

• Damian Alvarez Mallon (JSC, Germany)
• Markus Geimer (JSC, Germany)
• Fotis Georgatos (Illumina, UK)
• Kenneth Hoste (HPC-UGent)
• Robert Schmidt (OHRI, Canada)

Agenda

• update on support for PGI as toolchain compiler
  • https://github.com/hpcugent/easybuild/issues/211
• outlook to EasyBuild v2.8.0 (https://github.com/hpcugent/easybuild/issues/209)
  • https://github.com/hpcugent/easybuild-framework/milestones/v2.8.0
  • https://github.com/hpcugent/easybuild-easyblocks/milestones/v2.8.0
  • https://github.com/hpcugent/easybuild-easyconfigs/milestones/v2.8.0 Q&A

Notes

• PGI toolchain, pretty much there in develop

  • Markus: problems on Debian system with using PGI toolchain
    • using PGI 15.10; does it also occur with PGI 16?
    • seems related to binutils, works fine with system binutils (which is patched?)
    • related to multiarch
    • works fine with GCC-based toolchain though...
  • for older PGI versions (15.x), pgc++ is not 'correct' (although it is provided), pgCC is the recommended one
    • should be fixed in pgi.py
  • Rob will test PGI with MVAPICH2 + Intel MKL
    • Damian: toolchain like this is used @ JSC
      • MVAPICH2 version that is CUDA-aware is compiled with old PGI, may not work with newer PGI versions

• 2.8.0 roadmap

  • Damian: significant speedups in dry-run & installing extensions (Perl, Python, R)
    • thanks to:
      • refactoring to avoid recreating ModulesTool instances over and over again: https://github.com/hpcugent/easybuild-framework/pull/1735
      • caching of module avail: https://github.com/hpcugent/easybuild-framework/pull/1742
  • framework: https://github.com/hpcugent/easybuild-framework/milestones/v2.8.0
    • Kenneth will take a look at the bug reported by Damian w.r.t. build dependencies not being loaded when installing extensions
      • https://github.com/hpcugent/easybuild-framework/issues/1741
    • long-standard bug w.r.t. hierarchichal module naming schemes and Lua module files should be fixed (finally) too: https://github.com/hpcugent/easybuild-framework/pull/1474
    • support for CrayPGI toolchain: depends on availability of JG (CSCS)
  • easyblocks: https://github.com/hpcugent/easybuild-easyblocks/milestones/v2.8.0
    • nothing major outstanding
    • change to CMakeMake easyblock to always enable -DCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=Release is worth considering
      • https://github.com/hpcugent/easybuild-easyblocks/pull/911
    • SuiteSparse & SuperLU easyblocks: depends on availability of Xavier
      • https://github.com/hpcugent/easybuild-easyblocks/pull/863
      • https://github.com/hpcugent/easybuild-easyblocks/pull/860
    • updates to Score-P easyblock by Markus: review-ready, Kenneth will try and get this in (but not a blocker)
      • https://github.com/hpcugent/easybuild-easyblocks/pull/889
    • changes to SCOTCH easyblock w.r.t threading needs a bit more work to avoid breaking backwards compatibility
      • https://github.com/hpcugent/easybuild-easyblocks/pull/914
  • easyconfigs: https://github.com/hpcugent/easybuild-easyconfigs/milestones/v2.8.0
    • nothing major outstanding, open PRs need to be revised for inclusion in v2.8.0
    • foss/intel toolchain updates got merged (candidates for 2016b toolchains):
      • intel/2016.02-GCC-5.3: https://github.com/hpcugent/easybuild-easyconfigs/pull/2523
      • intel/2016.03-GCC-5.3: https://github.com/hpcugent/easybuild-easyconfigs/pull/3009
      • foss/2016.04: https://github.com/hpcugent/easybuild-easyconfigs/pull/3013

• Markus: long-standard issue with quoting and --job would be nice to resolve...

  • cfr. https://github.com/hpcugent/easybuild-framework/issues/1438
  • proposed fix in https://github.com/hpcugent/vsc-base/pull/151 got blocked