Issue with SYSTEM toolchain and float or int software versions in Easystack

[tloizou]

We are trying to use Easystack for building software. We noticed some issues:

1. Whenever a SYSTEM toolchain comes up and the software version is float (e.g. 2.32) or integer (e.g. 20150215) EB crashes.

You can find below examples from the Easystack file that break:

  binutils:
    toolchains:
      SYSTEM:
        versions: 
          2.32:
          2.30:
          2.35:
          2.34:
  Autotools:
    toolchains:
      SYSTEM:
        versions: 
          20150215:

In both cases, when using other toolchains e.g. GCCcore it works as expected. Only when there is a combination of the SYSTEM toolchain and the float or int version the issue occurs.

You can find below the error we are getting:

== 2021-05-19 10:25:11,710 easystack.py:223 INFO Building from easystack: 'easystack.yaml'
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "/usr/lib64/python2.7/runpy.py", line 162, in _run_module_as_main
    "__main__", fname, loader, pkg_name)
  File "/usr/lib64/python2.7/runpy.py", line 72, in _run_code
    exec code in run_globals
  File "/nvme/h/buildsets/eb_cyclone/software/EasyBuild/4.3.4/lib/python3.6/site-packages/easybuild/main.py", line 544, in <module>
    main()
  File "/nvme/h/buildsets/eb_cyclone/software/EasyBuild/4.3.4/lib/python3.6/site-packages/easybuild/main.py", line 231, in main
    orig_paths, general_options = parse_easystack(options.easystack)
  File "/nvme/h/buildsets/eb_cyclone/software/EasyBuild/4.3.4/lib/python3.6/site-packages/easybuild/framework/easystack.py", line 228, in parse_easystack
    easyconfig_names = easystack.compose_ec_filenames()
  File "/nvme/h/buildsets/eb_cyclone/software/EasyBuild/4.3.4/lib/python3.6/site-packages/easybuild/framework/easystack.py", line 59, in compose_ec_filenames
    'versionsuffix': sw.versionsuffix,
  File "/nvme/h/buildsets/eb_cyclone/software/EasyBuild/4.3.4/lib/python3.6/site-packages/easybuild/tools/module_naming_scheme/utilities.py", line 63, in det_full_ec_version
    ecver = ''.join([x for x in [ec.get('versionprefix', ''), ecver, ec.get('versionsuffix', '')] if x])
TypeError: sequence item 0: expected string, float found

2. Another issue comes up when the software version is float with zero at the end. For example 2019.10 or 9.50. Whenever we have such version EasyBuild is looking for 2019.1 or 9.5 and crashes. For example we have:

 Ghostscript:
    toolchains:
      GCCcore-8.3.0:
        versions:
          9.50:

EasyBuild is looking for Ghostscript version 9.5 instead of 9.50 and we get a missing config error.

3. EasyBuild ignores the "_" in the version. For example:

  XML-Parser:
    toolchains:
      GCCcore-8.3.0:
        versions:
          2.44_01:
            versionsuffix: '-Perl-5.28.0'

EB is looking for XML-Parser-2.4401-GCCcore-8.3.0-Perl-5.28.0.eb instead of XML-Parser-2.44_01-GCCcore-8.3.0-Perl-5.28.0.eb

[boegel]

Thanks a lot for the detailed bug report @tloizou, and the minimal examples, those will be very useful to include in our test suite when we look into fixing these issues...

[boegel]

@tloizou I think in all three cases, you can fix the issue you're seeing by wrapping the versions in single quotes.
So rather than using these in an easystack file:

• 2.32
• 20150215
• 9.50
• 2.44_01

use these instead:

• '2.32'
• '20150215'
• '9.50'
• '2.44_01'

We'll probably make the easystack parser a bit stricter to make this a hard requirement: all version must be wrapped in single quotes, to prevent the YAML parser from being a smartass and giving back float or int values for what should always be string values...

[boegel]

@tloizou The enhancements in #3693 ensure that you'll get a clear error message when software or toolchain versions in easystack files are being parsed like non-string values...

[tloizou]

Great! Thanks a lot @boegel !

[boegel]

Closing since #3693 is merged, will be included in upcoming EasyBuild v4.4.0 release...