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Conference call notes 20261021

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Kenneth Hoste edited this page Oct 21, 2026 · 1 revision

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Notes on the 304th EasyBuild conference call, Wednesday 21 Oct 2026 (14:00 UTC / 17:00 CEST)

Attendees

List of attendees (14):

  • Jorge Delgado Guerrero (University of Luxembourg)
  • Davide Grassano (CECAM)
  • Alexander Grund (ZIH, Dresden, Germany)
  • Kenneth Hoste (HPC-UGent, Belgium)
  • Georgios Kafanas (University of Luxembourg)
  • Sam Moors (Vrije Universiteit Brussel, Belgium)
  • Sébastien Moretti (SIB, Switzerland)
  • Mikael Öhman (Chalmers University of Technology, Sweden)
  • Bart Oldeman (McGill University, Calcul Québec, Digital Research Alliance of Canada)
  • Jan Reuter (JSC, Germany)
  • Åke Sandgren (Umeå University, Sweden)
  • Jörg Saßmannshausen (Imperial College London, UK)
  • Roberto Scipioni (Red Oak Consulting)
  • Cintia Willemyns (Vrije Universiteit Brussel, Belgium)

Agenda

  • overview of recent developments
  • outlook to next release
  • Q&A

Recent developments

  • latest EasyBuild release: EasyBuild v5.4.1 (14 Oct 2026)
  • next (stable) EasyBuild release: end of Nov'26
    • or sooner, should there be an urgent need for a quick bugfix release
  • ETA for EasyBuild 6.0: spring 2027

News

  • awaiting vote result for proposal to let EasyBuild join HPSF as a Core proejct

Merge sprints

  • most recent: Mon 19 Oct 2026
    • went from 781 open easyconfig PRs to 683 during merge sprint (so roughly 100 PRs less)
    • currently at ~660 open PRs, so cleanup push continues...
    • 90+ PRs were merged since Monday + ~58 old/stale PRs were closed
  • future easyconfigs merge sprints planned:
    • Mon 21 Dec 2026 (or a week earlier at 14 Dec)
    • 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  • at some point a sprint to revise & close outdated open issues across different EasyBuild repos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, v5.4.1)

  • blog/docs (recently merged PRs)

    • Document deprecated make_module_req_guess (PR #397)

  • framework (recently merged PRs)

    • bug fixes
      • (***) Fix leaked handles and processes in run_* functions (PR #5314)
      • (***) fix log message for failed download attempts in download_file (PR #5319)
      • restore initial environment after each installation in build_and_install_software function (rather than doing so before each installation in build_and_install_one) (PR #5341, PR #5344)
        • fixes failure when uploading test report for easyconfig that uses RPackage easyblock for stand-alone installation of an R package, cfr easyblocks issue #4262
    • enhancements
      • (***) enhance dep_is_filtered method in EasyConfig class: call parse_filter_deps if filter_deps_specs is None (PR #5276))
      • (***) improve error reporting in fetch step in case module for source dependency is not available yet (PR #5287)
      • (***) allow pathlib.Path in apply_regex_substitutions & remove (PR #5288)
      • (***) Enable module extensions for Environment Modules 5.7.0+ - (PR #5295)
      • (***) Automatically handle Git LFS for git_config sources (PR #5297, PR #5317, PR #5320)
        • Davide: enabled by default, maybe should be opt-in or at least provide way to opt-out?
      • Mention path for which a deprecated checksum is used (PR #5316)
      • (***) (drastically) reduce number of stat calls triggered by RPATH wrapper script (PR #5321)
    • changes
      • ...
    • code cleanup
      • ...
    • CI/test suite
      • (***) Use constants for commonly used test easyconfig folders, files and content (PR #5203, PR #5251)
      • (***) Simplify multi-segment path concatenation in tests (PR #5315)
      • (***) replace deprecated assertErrorRegex with assertRaisesRegex in tests (PR #5318)
      • (***) fix broken GitHub tests for --from-pr (PR #5322)
      • Avoid test_regtest clobbering repo dir (PR #5327)
    • other
      • ...

  • easyblocks (recently merged PRs)

    • bug fixes
      • (***) fix --sanity-check-only for Bundle easyblock (PR #4068)
      • (***) don't check package names and versions with pip list if sanity_check_pip_list is False (PR #4195)
      • (***) Ensure dependencies libpaths are not baked into binutils's ld - (PR #4209)
      • (***) Fix setting of component directories in Bundle easyblock when using buildininstalldir (PR #4065)
      • (***) use modulename for dependency lookup in RPackage easyblock (PR #4228)
      • (***) use --with-openmp configure option for PETSc based on openmp toolchain option (PR #4255)
        • rebuild of PETSc is required to make sure the openmp toolchain option has an actual impact
        • example available to verify that OpenMP support in PETSc installation works?
        • enhanced sanity check in PETSc easyblock to verify this?
    • enhancements
      • (***) Show directory that was searched for source directory in Clang easyblock (PR #3960)
      • (***) Updates to LAMMPS EasyBlock to work with development repo and builds with OBMD plugin (PR #4005)
      • add extra easyconfig parameter hardlink_object_storage to generic Dataset easyblock (PR #4162)
      • (***) 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)
      • (***) enhance custom easyblock for Rmpi to support stand-alone Rmpi installations (PR #4219)
      • (***) add sanity check commands to custom easyblock for Nim (PR #4231)
      • (***) extend list of values for PATH environment variables in generic Rpm easyblock (PR #4246)
      • (***) add support for RISC-V to Go easyblock (PR #4248)
      • disable post-install 'pip check' if it failed before install for EasyBuild (PR #4260)
    • updates
      • (***) Update TensorFlow easyblock for TensorFlow 2.19+ (PR #4205)
      • (***) Add support for newer opam releases in the OCaml easyblock (PR #4239)
      • (***) update jaxlib easyblock - adapt compiler handling for JAX 0.10+ (PR #4242)
    • changes
      • ...
    • new
      • ...
    • code cleanup
      • ...
    • CI/test suite
      • ...

  • easyconfigs (recently merged PRs)

    • > 120 easyconfig PRs were merged since last conf call
    • bug fixes/reports
      • (***) add explicit OpenSSL dependency to recent R-bundle-CRAN easyconfigs (2025.10, 2025.11, and 2026.07) (PR #26676)
      • fix tf_keras not being actually used in tensorflow-probability 0.25.0 - (PR #27056)
    • enhancements
      • ...
    • (noteworthy) new software
      • ...
    • noteworthy software updates
      • ...
    • cleanup
      • ...
    • changes
      • (***) enable versioned symbols for cURL 8.x (PR #27085)
      • remove unavailable interactiveDisplayBase from R-bundle-Bioconductor 3.23 (PR #27213)
    • CI/test suite
      • (***) Replace assertErrorRegex by assertRaisesRegex (PR #4245)

Open (active) PRs

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

    • ...

  • framework (recently active open PRs + issues)

    • bugs
      • ...
    • enhancements
      • Make join_path_var accept paths as separate arguments (PR #5324)
      • Accept Path instances for main/parse_options args (PR #5325)
      • Add sanity_check_cuda easyconfig parameter to skip CUDA sanity checks (PR #5326)
      • Improve Git LFS handling when creating source archives from Git (PR #5335)
      • add support for configuring test mode to use in easyblocks (minimal, standard, exhaustive) (draft PR #5337)
      • Cache GitHub token (PR #5338)
      • add cuda_cc_gencode template (PR #5339)
      • Add %(extension_name)s templates and use them in PYPI_* constants (PR #5340)
    • code cleanup
      • ...
    • changes
      • EasyBuild should reset the environment before the sanity-check step (issue #5342)
    • CI/test suite
      • Reuse setup_fake_binary in tests (PR #5343)

  • easyblocks (recently active open PRs + issues)

    • bug fixes/reports
      • ...
    • enhancements
    • updates
      • ...
    • changes
      • ...
    • code cleanup
      • ...
    • new easyblocks
      • add custom easyblock for PsN (PR #4137)
      • add custom easyblock for PMIx (PR #4214)
      • custom EasyBlock for Slicer (PR #4218)
      • add custom easyblock for eOn (PR #4240)
      • add custom easyblock for SeisSol (PR #4241)
    • CI/test suite
      • ...

  • easyconfigs (recently active open PRs + issues)

    • ~660 open easyconfig PRs currently
    • bug fixes/reports
      • ...
    • enhancements
      • ...
    • (noteworthy) new software
      • ...
    • software updates
      • ...
    • changes
      • ...
    • CI/test suite
      • ...

Q&A / other

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