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Conference call notes 20260909

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Kenneth Hoste edited this page Sep 9, 2026 · 1 revision

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Notes on the 301st EasyBuild conference call, Wednesday 9 Sept 2026 (08:00 UTC / 10:00 CEST)

Attendees

List of attendees (19):

  • Bob Dröge (Univ. of Groningen, The Netherlands)
  • Davide Grassano (CECAM)
  • Alexander Grund (ZIH, Dresden, Germany)
  • Jorge Delgado Guerrero (University of Luxembourg)
  • Jasper Grimm (University of York, UK)
  • Kenneth Hoste (HPC-UGent, Belgium)
  • Georgios Kafanas (University of Luxembourg)
  • Emik Lin (Univ. of Hong Kong)
  • Sam Moors (Vrije Universiteit Brussel, Belgium)
  • Sébastien Moretti (SIB, Switzerland)
  • Alan O'Cais (freelancer, HPC-UGent)
  • Mikael Öhman (Chalmers University of Technology, Sweden)
  • Jurij Pečar (EMBL, Germany)
  • Jan Reuter (JSC, Germany)
  • Jarne Renders (Vrije Universiteit Brussel, Belgium)
  • Åke Sandgren (Umeå University, Sweden)
  • Jörg Saßmannshausen (Imperial College London, UK)
  • Lars Viklund
  • Cintia Willemyns (Vrije Universiteit Brussel, Belgium)

Agenda

  • overview of recent developments
  • outlook to next release
  • 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  • at some point a sprint to revise & close outdated open issues across different EasyBuild repos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
      • Fix symlink handling in dir_contains_files (PR #5236)
      • Fix dry-run message in extension installation (PR #5248)
      • Fix unsetting $MODULEPATH when removing last path in Lmod.unuse (PR #5272)
    • enhancements
      • Support pathlib Paths in mkdir and cleanup (PR #5233)
      • Enhance error message when creating symlink where a file is already (PR #5237)
      • Allow pathlib.Path input value for filetools.normalize_path (PR #5271)
      • Show proper error message for issues in easyblocks (syntax errors, etc.) (PR #5274)
      • add --disable-robot to --robot help description (PR #5275)
    • changes
      • ...
    • code cleanup
      • Fix line endings in easybuild/framework/extension.py (PR #5256)
    • CI/test suite
      • Use constants for commonly used test easyconfig folders, files and content
      • Make network ops on CI more reliable (PR #5270)
    • other
      • ...

  • easyblocks (recently merged PRs)

    • bug fixes
      • Symlink include/openssl subdirectory instead of individual header files for OpenSSL wrapper (PR #4199)
      • do not try to disable Qt when building CubeGUI in Score-P easyblock (PR #4215)
    • enhancements
      • Allow installing ESPResSo from a commit (PR #4207)
    • updates
      • Update TF_SYSTEM_LIBS for TensorFlow 2.19+ (PR #4194)
    • changes
      • ...
    • new
      • ...
    • code cleanup
      • ...
    • CI/test suite
      • ...

  • easyconfigs (recently merged PRs)

    • ~30 easyconfig PRs were merged since last conf call
    • bug fixes/reports
      • add patch for OpenBLAS 0.3.32 to fix sdot/ddot issues on non-SVE Arm64 (PR #26780)
      • add patch for Qt6 6.11.2 to fix a V8 build issue on systems with 64KiB pages (PR #26792)
    • enhancements
      • ...
    • (noteworthy) new software
      • ...
    • noteworthy software updates
      • PyTorch 2.9.1 w/ foss/2025b + CUDA 12.9.1 (PR #24926)
        • Alexander is actively working on PyTorch 2.12/2.13
    • cleanup
      • ...
    • changes
      • ...
    • CI/test suite
      • ...

Open (active) PRs

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

    • ...

  • framework (recently active open PRs + issues)

    • bugs
      • Bring back async_cmd_check to check for parallel extension install completion and fix dry-run mode with parallel extensions (PR #5223)
      • Avoid crash when running extension installation in --dry-run mode (PR #5238)
      • RPATH wrapper assumes that linker option -v only prints version, but it doesn't (issue #5258)
      • Properly escape single quotes in RPATH wrapper (PR #5261)
      • Initialize name and version in EasyConfig instance of Extension (PR #5267)
    • enhancements
      • also bwrap module installpath (PR #5214)
        • @Sam: updates?
      • Add extension_name easyconfig parameter, to specify name of extension to use in generated module file (PR #5259)
      • Add factory method make_deprecated_dict_class for creating a dict with deprecated/replaced keys (PR #5260)
      • Allow pathlib.Path for filetools.normalize_path (PR #5271)
      • Add support for specifying dependencies required to obtain source files via source_deps easyconfig parameter (PR #5273)
    • code cleanup
      • Cleanup use of dicts, e.g. use of .keys() (PR #5165)
    • changes
      • Raise an error if toolchain.dependencies is accessed before prepare_step (PR #5234)
      • Rename modulename to load_name for Extensions and allow as root-parameter (PR #5257)
      • Replace raw dict by CategorizedPaths NamedTuple(-like) (PR #5269)
    • CI/test suite

  • easyblocks (recently active open PRs + issues)

    • bug fixes/reports
      • LAMMPS: workaround for ARM builds with CUDA and ARM (PR #4175)
      • LAMMPS: set $LD_PRELOAD for testing CUDA build without device present (PR #4190)
      • Ensure dependencies libpaths are not baked into binutils's ld (PR #4209)
      • Correct buildopts propagation across iterations for OpenBLAS (PR #4213)
    • enhancements
      • Add TensorFlow easyblock options for Bazel startup flags and TF_SYSTEM_LIBS exclusions (PR #4193)
      • Enhance test deduplication in PyTorch test parsing (PR #4203)
      • don't remove test installdir when --disable-cleanup-tmpdir is set for PythonPackage easyblock (PR #4208)
      • document extra_option modulename of PythonPackage (PR #4210)
      • enhance GROMACS easyblock to allow building with CP2K QM/MM support (PR #4211)
      • Handle CCache in PyTorch easyblock + consistency fixes (PR #4216)
    • updates
      • Update TensorFlow easyblock for TensorFlow 2.19+ (PR #4205)
      • Update sepp easyblock for sepp 4.5.6+ (PR #4212)
    • changes
      • ...
    • code cleanup
      • ...
    • new easyblocks
      • add custom easyblock for PsN (PR #4137)
      • Add new generic EasyBlock HuggingFaceDataset (PR #4141)
      • Add custom easyblock for PMIx (PR #4214)
    • CI/test suite
      • Add test for correct import of other easyblocks (PR #4182)

  • easyconfigs (recently active open PRs + issues)

    • over ~710 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

  • Lmod 9.4 release incl. bug fix for CVE in tab completion support
    • fixes bug being vulnerable to files named like /tmp/modules/$(echo foo > $HOME/foo).lua
  • Jörg asking for help with easyconfigs PR #22394
    • 2023a toolchain will be deprecated first, and this Scikit-HEP version is perhaps too old to still be useful
  • Alan: exposing RPATH wrappers by default to users
    • filtering of $LD_LIBRARY_PATH in EESSI causes trouble for self-compiled software, unless buildenv module is loaded (which provided RPATH wrappers)
    • buildenv module could be loaded automatically via an Lmod hook when a compiler/toolchain gets loaded
      • Lmod hook would be aware of being inside of an EasyBuild session (an not load buildenv then)
      • would this be interesting to some people?
      • may result in multiple buildenv modules being loaded (like when combining modules installed with foss & lfoss)
        • could be avoided with buildenv-GCC/<version>, buildenv-foss/<version>, but we don't really want this
        • or introduce buildenv-compiler (and make buildenv load it as a dependency)
    • other option would be to include RPATH wrappers in compiler installation itself
      • would be a pain, especially w.r.t. changes being made to RPATH wrappers?
  • Emik: update on PR for PyTorch 2.9.1 with foss/2025a + CUDA 12.8.0
    • easyconfigs PR #25266
    • should be compared with recently merged PR for PyTorch 2.9.1 w/ foss/2025b + CUDA 12.9.1 (see PR #24926)
    • Alex is focusing on wheel-based easyconfig for PyTorch 2.9.1 w/ foss/2025a + CUDA 12.8.0, see PR #25267
  • Mikael: feedback on PR to remove outdated nvofbf toolchain easyconfig (PR #26803)

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