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Conference call notes 20260225

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Kenneth Hoste edited this page Feb 25, 2026 · 1 revision

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Notes on the 289th EasyBuild conference call, Wednesday 25 Feb 2026 (09:00 UTC / 10:00 CET)

Attendees

List of attendees (20):

  • Jorge Delgado Guerrero (University of Luxembourg)
  • Miguel Dias Costa (University of Coimbra, Portugal)
  • Loris Ercole (CECAM)
  • Davide Grassano (CECAM)
  • Jasper Grimm (University of York, UK)
  • Sven Hansen (RWTH, Germany)
  • Leonardo Honfi Camilo (Wageningen University, The Netherlands)
  • Kenneth Hoste (HPC-UGent)
  • Adam Huffman (University of Oxford, UK)
  • Kurt Lust (UAntwerpen & LUMI User Support Team)
  • Sam Moors (Vrije Universiteit Brussel, Belgium)
  • Alan O'Cais (freelancer, HPC-UGent)
  • Mikael Öhman (Chalmers University of Technology, Sweden)
  • Andrea Piserchia (E4)
  • Jarne Renders (Vrije Universiteit Brussel, Belgium)
  • Jan André Reuter (JSC, Germany)
  • Jörg Saßmannshausen (Imperial College London, UK)
  • Åke Sandgren (Umeå University, Sweden)
  • Alain van Hoof (TU Eindhoven, Netherlands)
  • Cintia Willemyns (Vrije Universiteit Brussel, Belgium)

Agenda

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

Recent developments

News

  • 11th EasyBuild User Meeting: 21-23 April 2026 @ Portugal, see https://easybuild.io/eum26
    • registration open!
    • ~50% of in-person seats taken (max. 40)
    • travel + hotels suggestions on website
    • preliminary program available - more talks to be confirmed
  • EasyBuild User Survey
    • coming (really really) soon
    • will likely be open for most of March 2026

Merge sprints

  • last merge sprint (Mon 16 Feb 2026)
    • number of open easyconfig PRs was pushed down from 601 to 542
    • even went down to ~530 in the aftermath
    • now back to 570...
  • future easyconfigs merge sprints planned:
    • 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  • at some point a sprint to revise & close outdated open issues across different EasyBuild repos

Merged PRs

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

  • blog/docs (merged PRs)

    • ...

  • framework (merged PRs)

    • bug fixes
      • (*) Use initially stored environment to determine GPU info for test reports (PR #5088)
      • Fix setting $OMPI_MCA_rmaps_base_oversubscribe in sanity check (PR #5123)
    • enhancements
      • (*) add support for injecting checksums for Rust crates with --inject-checksums (PR #4661)
      • hide output of module commands in log file by default + add --debug-module-cmds option to opt-in to keeping them (PR #5045)
      • add script to gather git submodules (PR #5060)
    • changes
      • (*) Deprecate print_error function and replace it with new print_error_and_exit function (PR #5092)
    • code cleanup
      • ...
    • CI/test suite
      • import specific submodule pygraph.classes.digraph in test_dep_graph* so we can skip the test if import fails with setuptools >= 82.0.0 (PR #5116)
        • pkg_resources was removed from setuptools
    • other
      • ...

  • easyblocks (merged PRs)

    • bug fixes
      • (*) Fix setting Python variables in TensorRT easyblock (PR #4046)
      • (*) fix WIEN2k easyblock for newer toolchains (PR #4048)
      • (*) fix error reporting for number of checksums vs number of sources + patches in custom easyblock for Python (PR #4055)
      • (*) fix call to parent for static method src_parameter_names in Cargo easyblock (PR #4062)
      • (*) Fix limiting of threads for OpenBLAS tests (PR #4067)
    • enhancements
      • (*) Add option to allow missing or additional detected PyTorch test suites (PR #4052)
      • (*) enhance PythonPackage and PythonBundle to support updating module footers for click autocompletion for specified binaries (PR #4056)
    • updates
      • (*) update custom easyblock for FDTD-Solutions so it can be used to install Lumerical-FDTD (PR #3362)
    • changes
      • ...
    • new
      • ...
    • code cleanup
      • (*) Enable flake8-comprehension code style check and fix issues (PR #3989)
    • CI
      • ...

  • easyconfigs (merged PRs)

    • ~XXX easyconfig PRs were merged since last conf call
    • bug fixes/reports
      • (*) add patch to work around failing test in LWP::Protocol::https extension due to problem with SSL certificate for example.com (PR #25333)
      • add patch to UCX v1.18.0 and v1.19.0 to fix build failure with glibc v2.43 (PR #25399)
      • add (post-install) patch for libtool v2.5.4 to improve support for LLVM flang (PR #25345)
    • enhancements
      • ...
    • (noteworthy) new software
      • ...
    • noteworthy software updates
      • PyTorch v2.3.0 w/ foss/2023b + CUDA 12.4.0 (PR #23553)
      • LLVM 21.1.8 w/ GCCcore/15.2.0 (PR #25009)
        • will be the base lfoss/2026.1, waiting for LLVM 22.x would not be wise
        • should allow us to enable plugin for QE that had to be disabled, may also be relevant for CP2K
    • cleanup
      • ...
    • changes
      • ...

Open (active) PRs

  • blog/docs (open PRs + issues)

    • ...

  • framework (open PRs + issues)

    • bugs
      • Always reset environment after build in build_and_install_software (PR #5120)
        • intrusive change, may need to wait until EasyBuild 6.0?
    • enhancements
      • Proposed changes to make EasyBuild plugin-able through entrypoints (PR #4918)
        • better alternative to hooks for customizing EasyBuild
      • New experimental eb2 CLI using click (PR #4961)
      • Added command line parameter --fetch-all (PR #5014)
      • load list of modules in one go as opposed to running separate module load commands for each of them (draft PR #5114)
        • very simply PR, but unclear if it actually is a significant (performance) improvement
        • more extensive work is required to counter the slowdown observed for EasyBuild 5.x vs 4.x (due to resetting of environment before installation of each extension) (issue #5052)
      • Make test_cases_step command executable (PR #5118)
      • allow the use of extension specific github_account (PR #5121)
      • add rich colors to print_msg (draft PR #5125)
      • Only make use of graphviz to generate dependency graphs instead of pygraph (PR #5128)
      • add support for installing with bwrap (PR #5130)
        • what if bwrap doesnt' work?
        • how does this work with --job?
        • experimental feature?
        • follow-up with --deploy feature
        • metadata file alongside bwrapped installations
          • keep track of what was the installation target
          • maybe to also sign installations
      • Add support for non-path variables in module_load_environment (PR #5138)
    • code cleanup
      • Replace assertTrue/False with assertRegex in easyblock test (PR #5137)
    • changes
    • CI/test suite
      • also test with Python 3.15 (draft PR #5113)
        • Python 3.15 is not released yet, but it seems like no changes will be required to EasyBuild framework to be compatible with Python 3.15 \o/
        • interesting because of support fo lazy imports

  • easyblocks (open PRs + issues)

    • bug fixes/reports
    • enhancements
      • add sanity_pip_list parameter to verify Python package names and versions with pip list (PR #4049)
        • can be tested with --sanity-check-only on jsc-zen3
        • others can help with --sanity-check-only --include-easyblocks-from-pr 4049 --upload-test-report
        • Mikael: should definitely test CUDA-Python
    • updates
      • ...
    • changes
      • ...
    • code cleanup
      • ...
    • new easyblocks
      • add custom easyblock to build & install ROCm components (PR #3861)
      • custom easyblock for ESPResSo (PR #4066)

  • easyconfigs (open PRs + issues)

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

Common toolchains

  • {foss/intel/lfoss}/2026.1
    • revised versioning scheme for common toolchains, moving away from <year>{a,b}
      • aiming to be closer to one common toolchain version per year (instead of two)
    • likely to be included with next EasyBuild release...
    • relevant PRs tagged with 2026.1 label

Q&A / other

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