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Conference call notes 20260128

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Kenneth Hoste edited this page Jan 28, 2026 · 1 revision

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Notes on the 287th EasyBuild conference call, Wednesday 28 Jan 2026 (09:00 UTC / 10:00 CET)

Attendees

List of attendees (19):

  • Jorge Delgado Guerrero (University of Luxembourg)
  • Bob Dröge (Univ. of Groningen, The Netherlands)
  • Loris Ercole (CECAM)
  • Davide Grassano (CECAM)
  • Jasper Grimm (University of York, UK)
  • Leonardo Honfi Camilo (Wageningen University, The Netherlands)
  • Kenneth Hoste (HPC-UGent)
  • 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)
  • Mikael Öhman (Chalmers University of Technology, Sweden)
  • Jurij Pečar (EMBL, Germany)
  • Jarne Renders (Vrije Universiteit Brussel, Belgium)
  • Jan Reuter (JSC, Germany)
  • Jörg Saßmannshausen (Imperial College London, UK)
  • Åke Sandgren (Umeå University, Sweden)
  • Alain van Hoof (TU Eindhoven, Netherlands)

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...

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  • at some point a sprint to revise & close outdated open issues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
      • Add back easybuild.toolchains.compiler.nvhpc (PR #5089)
      • change deprecated NVHPC toolchain classes to inherit from supported counterparts (PR #5096)
      • Fix crash when showing failed shell command containing special chars (PR #5098)
    • enhancements
      • ...
    • changes
      • ...
    • code cleanup
      • ...
    • CI/test suite
      • ...
    • other
      • ...

  • easyblocks (merged PRs)

    • bug fixes
      • avoid incorrect symlinks for NVHPC by force-setting selected CUDA version in install script (PR #4024)
      • transfer dependencies in Bundle easyblock and fix sanity check for module only (PR #4037)
      • Set $Python3_ROOT_DIR in PythonPackage easyblock (PR #4043)
      • Ensure AmberTools will find the correct python library and include dir (PR #4045)
        • should maybe be also fixed in CMakeMake?
    • enhancements
      • Add support for detecting external MAGMA library for ELSI (PR #3536)
      • Create lockfile for Cargo package if missing (PR #3995)
      • Explictly call PythonPackage and Cargo configure step in CargoPythonPackage easyblock (PR #3996)
      • add LLVM support to ParaStationMPI easyblock (PR #4047)
    • updates
      • Changes to LLVM easyblock required for LLVM 21 (PR #3902)
    • changes
      • Make CargoPythonPackage the default class for extensions/components of CargoPythonBundle (PR #3993)
    • new
      • New custom easyblock for ROCm-LLVM (PR #3823)
    • code cleanup
      • ...
    • CI
      • ...

  • easyconfigs (merged PRs)

    • ~XXX easyconfig PRs were merged since last conf call
    • bug fixes/reports
      • add patches to hwloc v2.12.1 to better handle ACPI CPCC, fixes performance regression in MPI startup time (time required for MPI_Init) (PRs #25043 + #25063)
        • mostly for Zen2/3, the more MPI ranks used, the worse the performance regression is
      • add patch to use https instead of http to fix failing MDTraj tests (PR #25111)
      • add missing dependencies for PICRUSt2 2.6.1 (PR #25139)
    • enhancements
      • ...
    • (noteworthy) new software
      • ROCm-LLVM v19.0.0 w/ ROCm 6.4.1 (PR #23304)
    • noteworthy software updates
      • PyTorch v2.7.1 w/ foss/2024a + CUDA 12.6.0 (PR #23923)
    • cleanup
      • ...
    • changes
      • ...

Open (active) PRs

  • blog/docs (open PRs + issues)

    • ...

  • framework (open PRs + issues)

    • bugs
      • Properly handle toolchains defining openmp toolchain opt as dict (PR #5093)
      • Ensure git repo URL does not contan double-slahses due to trailing slash in source URL (PR #5097)
    • enhancements
      • Add LLVM toolchains using ParaStationMPI (PR #5094)
      • Add ROCm toolchain based on LLVM toolchain efforts (WIP PR #5099)
        • active WIP by Jan
        • feedback & more testing is welcome
          • for example on LUMI, should support ROCm 6.4 now
        • for discussion on this, see #amd-rocm channel in EESSI Slack (or #amd channel in EasyBuild Slack)
        • AMD's TheRock uses all cores on system, no way to limit it?!
    • code cleanup
      • ...
    • changes
      • 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 missed sanity check in custom easyblock for GCC (PR #4041)
      • Bundle easyblock not aware of ignore_test_failure (issue #4044)
        • best way to deal with this is rename EasyBlock._test_step in framework to EasyBlock.test_step (and current EasyBlock.test_step to EasyBlock._raw_test_step)?
      • Ensure AmberTools will find the correct python library and include dir (PR #4045)
      • Fix setting Python variables in TensorRT easyblock (PR #4046)
      • fix WIEN2k easyblock for newer toolchains (PR #4048)
    • enhancements
      • add custom easyconfig parameter with_cxx_backtrace to GCC easyblock to enable the build of the libstdcxx-backtrace library (PR #3538)
      • add sanity_pip_list parameter to verify Python package names and versions with pip list (PR #4049)
        • should be tested with a bunch of existing easyconfigs, like Python, Python-bundle-PyPI, SciPy-bundle, matplotlib, etc.
      • Allow easier reuse of compose_install_command of PythonPackage, and add %(python)s template and default Python libdir in sanity check (PR #4050)
      • update ELPA easyblock to make it aware of NVHPC toolchain compiler (PR #4051)
      • Add option to allow missing or additional detected PyTorch test suites (PR #4052)
      • Update QuantumESPRESSO easyblock - add pretestopts + GPU test cmd (PR #4053)
    • updates
      • Update CP2K easyblock for v2024 and v2025 (PR #3892)
    • changes
      • 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
      • add custom easyblock to build & install ROCm components (PR #3861)
      • new easyblock for AOCL-LAPACK (PR #4042)

  • easyconfigs (open PRs + issues)

    • bug fixes/reports
      • add patches to GCCcore 14.2.0 & 14.3.0 to fix ICE with SVE on aarch64 (PR #25090)
    • enhancements
      • ...
    • (noteworthy) new software
    • 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)
      • CP2K v2025.2 w/ foss/2025a (PR #23696)
    • changes
      • add patches to allow offline build of Amber (PR #23747)
      • require setting sanity_pip_list for new PRs (PR #25112)

Common toolchains

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

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

Q&A / other

  • Jörg: easyconfigs PR #25158
    • configure_step in PETSc easyblock should be made aware of HDF5 (see sep_deps list)
    • Davide: way to advertise which dependencies are being considered by an easyblock
      • eb --known-deps --easyblock EB_PETSc
      • would be significant effort in easyblock to report which dependencies they pick up on
  • OpenMPI-5.0.3-NVHPC-24.9-CUDA-12.6.0.eb fails due to toolchain dependency mismatch with NVHPC / nvidia-compilers (issue #25120)

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