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Conference call notes 20260826

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Kenneth Hoste edited this page Aug 26, 2026 · 1 revision

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Notes on the 300th EasyBuild conference call, Wednesday 26 August 2026 (15:00 UTC / 17:00 CEST)

Attendees

List of attendees (13):

  • Davide Grassano (CECAM)
  • Alexander Grund (ZIH, Dresden, Germany)
  • Jorge Delgado Guerrero (University of Luxembourg)
  • Leonardo Honfi Camilo (Wageningen University & Research, Netherlands
  • Kenneth Hoste (HPC-UGent)
  • Georgios Kafanas (University of Luxembourg)
  • Kurt Lust (University of Antwerp, LUMI)
  • Hugo Meiland (Microsoft HPC)
  • Vladislav Mogilev (Univ. of Birmingham, UK)
  • Sam Moors (Vrije Universiteit Brussel, Belgium)
  • Mikael Öhman (Chalmers University of Technology, Sweden)
  • Bart Oldeman (McGill University, Calcul Québec, Digital Research Alliance of Canada)
  • Lars Viklund

Agenda

  • overview of recent developments
  • Q&A

Recent developments

News

  • ...

Merge sprints

  • future easyconfigs merge sprints planned:
    • Mon 19 Oct 2026
    • Mon 21 Dec 2026
    • Mon 15 Feb 2027
    • Mon 19 Apr 2027
    • Mon 21 Jun 2027
    • Mon 16 Aug 2027
  • aiming for semi-fixed schedule every other month: 3rd Monday in even months (with exceptions)
  • at some point a sprint to revise & close outdated open issues across different EasyBuild repos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 (recently merged PRs)

    • ...

  • framework (recently merged PRs)

    • bug fixes
      • ...
    • enhancements
      • add join_path_var function to join list of paths into a colon-separated string value (PR #5228)
    • changes
      • deprecate useless EasyBlock.exts_all class variable (PR #5235)
    • code cleanup
      • ...
    • CI/test suite
      • ...
    • other
      • ...

  • easyblocks (recently merged PRs)

    • bug fixes
      • do not run scipy easyblock tests for runtest = False (PR #4200)
    • enhancements
      • enhance ESMF easyblock to add support for Pnetcdf and ParallelIO (PIO) (PR #4117)
      • enhance binutils easyblock to ensure system search path is used for ld instead of the default one by setting $LIB_PATH in build step (PR #4204)
    • updates
      • update LLVM easyblock to support LLVM 22 (PR #4078)
    • changes
      • ...
    • new
      • ...
    • code cleanup
      • ...
    • CI/test suite
      • Remove superflous mock methods in EasyBlockSpecificTest (PR #4202)

  • easyconfigs (recently merged PRs)

    • ~75 easyconfig PRs were merged since last conf call
    • bug fixes/reports
      • Add PostgreSQL as an EB dependency to GDAL (PR #26637)
      • add patch for zarr 3.1.x to backport fix for mixed integer/list indexing (PR #26667)
      • add patch for dask 2025.x to fix for race condition issue when writing sharded arrays (PR #26672)
    • enhancements
      • ...
    • (noteworthy) new software
      • ...
    • noteworthy software updates
    • cleanup
      • ...
    • changes
      • Update OpenSSL/3 wrapper with new build deps (PR #26678)
      • use gfbf instead of GCCcore toolchain for qrupdate v1.1.2 + build shared lib & run testsuite - (PR #26712)
    • CI/test suite
      • ...

Open (active) PRs

  • blog/docs (recently active open PRs + issues)

    • ...

  • framework (recently active open PRs + issues)

    • bugs
      • Fix fake_module dependencies for ExtensionsEasyblock with --sanity-check-only (PR #5182)
      • Fix symlink handling in dir_contains_files (PR #5236)
      • Avoid crash when running extension installation in --dry-run mode (PR #5238)
    • enhancements
      • also bwrap module installpath (PR #5214)
      • Support pathlib Paths in mkdir and cleanup (PR #5233)
      • Enhance error message when creating symlink where a file is already (PR #5237)
      • Add a script to split build log files into steps (with and without debug output) (PR #5239)
    • code cleanup
      • ...
    • changes
      • Load dependencies of SYSTEM toolchain by full name (PR #5051)
      • Bring back async_cmd_check to check for parallel extension install completion and fix dry-run mode with parallel extensions (PR #5223)
      • Raise an error if toolchain.dependencies is accessed before prepare_step (PR #5234)
    • CI/test suite
      • Use assert(Not)Regex instead of assertTrue or assertFalse in tests (PR #5188)

  • easyblocks (recently active open PRs + issues)

    • bug fixes/reports
      • ...
    • enhancements
      • LAMMPS: set $LD_PRELOAD for testing CUDA build without device present (PR #4190)
      • Add TensorFlow easyblock options for Bazel startup flags and TF_SYSTEM_LIBS exclusions (PR #4193)
      • Update TF_SYSTEM_LIBS for TensorFlow 2.19+ (PR #4194)
      • Enhance test deduplication in PyTorch test parsing (PR #4203)
      • Allow installing ESPResSo from a commit (PR #4207)
      • don't remove test installdir when --disable-cleanup-tmpdir is set for PythonPackage easyblock (PR #4208)
    • updates
      • Update TensorFlow easyblock for TensorFlow 2.19+ (PR #4205)
    • changes
      • Symlink include folder instead of files for OpenSSL wrapper (PR #4199)
    • code cleanup
      • ...
    • new easyblocks
    • CI/test suite
      • Add test for correct import of other easyblocks (PR #4182)

  • easyconfigs (recently active open PRs + issues)

    • over ~680 open easyconfig PRs currently
    • bug fixes/reports
      • Add OpenSSL explicitly to R-bundle-CRAN to avoid mixing with system libs (PR #26676)
    • enhancements
      • ...
    • (noteworthy) new software
      • ...
    • software updates
      • ...
    • changes
      • enabling symbol versioning in cURL easyconfigs (issue #26684)
    • CI/test suite
      • ...

Q&A / other

  • Hugo: backporting GCC patches (also OpenBLAS)
    • cfr. recent PR #26444 for OpenBLAS
    • bumping toolchain components is something we generally don't do, since that leads to chaos (and new software versions often come with new bugs)
    • same approach, backporting of patches and add them to existing easyconfigs, makes sense for GCC
  • trouble with downloading of config.guess in CI
    • mitigated through caching, see easyconfigs PR #26699
    • maybe ConfigureMake easyblock should be tweaked to be more "careful" with downloading of config.guess script?
    • determine download location based on checksum of file contents, rather than EasyBuild version?
    • fallback download from sources.easybuild.io?
  • Bart: question on common toolchain versions
    • currently unclear what base for foss/2027.1 toolchain would be, too early to tel
    • today, would be either GCC 15.3 or 16.2
    • but could be GCC 15.4 or 16.3 if those are released before 2027.1 toolchain gets defined
    • see also https://gcc.gnu.org/develop.html#timeline
    • Bart: unclear which GCC version to use to contribute easyconfig for new UCX version
  • fix way in which tagbot determines diff between PR branch and develop

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