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Conference call notes 20180425

Kenneth Hoste edited this page Apr 25, 2018 · 3 revisions

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Notes on the 100th EasyBuild conference call, Wednesday April 25th 2018 (5pm - 6pm CET)

Attendees

Alphabetical list of attendees (10):

  • Damian Alvarez (JSC, Germany)
  • Pablo Escobar (UniBas/SciCORE, Switzerland)
  • Fotis Georgatos (Illumina, UK)
  • Kenneth Hoste (HPC-UGent, Belgium)
  • Adam Huffman (Big Data Institute, University of Oxford)
  • Bart Oldeman (ComputeCanada)
  • Alan O'Cais (JSC, Germany)
  • Åke Sandgren (Umeå University, Sweden)
  • Shahzeb Siddiqui (Pfizer)
  • Davide Vanzo (Vanderbilt University)

Agenda

  • outlook to upcoming EasyBuild v3.6.0
  • discussion on enabling automatic fallback to lib64 in sanity check by default (or not)
  • feedback on including support in PythonPackage easyblock to detect auto-downloading of dependencies
  • proposal by Jack to handle Java security updates using wrapper module
  • Q&A

EasyBuild v3.6.0

Enabling automatic fallback to lib64 in sanity check?

  • cfr. https://github.com/easybuilders/easybuild-framework/pull/2477
  • let sanity check fall back to checking for lib64/libfoo.a when hardcoded lib/libfoo.a was not found
  • could/should be enhanced to work both ways (lib->lib64 and lib64->lib)
  • no objections from EasyBuilders attending conf call
  • should be OK to enable this by default
  • Åke: should def be an opt-out option for it if enabled by default
    • there will be, e.g. --disable-lib64-fallback-sanity-check
  • Markus: could only be an actual problem on a real multi-arch system (32/64-bit)
    • but unlikely to be very relevant nowadays?

Detecting auto-downloaded dependencies in PythonPackage easyblock

  • cfr. https://github.com/easybuilders/easybuild-easyblocks/pull/1377
  • implements detection of auto-downloaded dependencies of Python packages by pip or setup.py install
  • opt-in: only when download_dep_fail is set to True in easyconfigs
    • default will remain False in EasyBuild 3.x, may change to True in 4.x
  • we could make it a policy to have download_dep_fail enabled in new easyconfig files that installed Python packages
  • Åke: should only error out at the end of installing all extensions, if possible...
    • Kenneth: not so trivial, since each extension is handled by PythonPackage in isolation of others
    • would require further changes to Python, Bundle easyblocks, maybe even to framework somehow...

Migrating to Java wrapper module to deal with security updates

  • cfr. https://github.com/easybuilders/easybuild-easyconfigs/pull/5203
  • change Java to a bundle that wraps around a specific JDK version
  • allows to update JDK to most recent bugfix/security release by just changing a single module
  • no objections from EasyBuilders attending the conf call, seems like a good approach
  • Fotis: Java 1.7 vs 1.8 compatibility?
    • this approach still locks you in to either Java 1.7 or 1.8, just not to a particular bugfix release of it
  • Kenneth will work with Jack on transitioning to this approach for Java in the central repository
  • Åke: could also be useful in other contexts
    • Markus: e.g. OpenSSL (if you want to install it through EB rather than using the system OpenSSL)
    • Åke: maybe also CUDA/ cuDNN (or maybe not...)

Other

  • rant from Fotis on guy jumping from a cliff, just to show off the nice environment he calling in from

  • Markus: libdrm easyconfigs are missing a pkg-config build dep

    • only checked recent libdrm versions, should this be fixed in all easyconfigs?
      • unclear whether pkg-config is actually required in older versions...
    • Kenneth can check whether old libdrm versions need pkg-config too
    • we hope to catch these type of problems earlier on in the future, by testing easyconfig contributions in a (Singularity) container rather than directly on a production system
      • could also help with making EasyBuild more stable across different OSs
  • Åke: SCons easyblock: to build SCons itself, or to build with SCons?

    • the generic SCons easyblock is for building with SCons
    • SCons itself is installed using PythonPackage easyblock
    • will need to use it for Scipion, a Cryo-EM framework
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