Does upgrading EasyBuild version require rebuilding existing modules?

[adityaramaraju]

Hi,

Clearly am new to the EB ecosystem.. We have a rather old version of EB running on our servers and would like to upgrade the EB version (as well as the underlying OS of the EB servers). So the question is two-parts, but refers to the same point.

1. Will upgrading the underlying OS require rebuilding of EB modules that were built on the server? I understand the idea of EB is to satisfy most of the required dependencies defined in the easyconfigs within the eb modules itself. But eb might link to system libraries in some cases and such libraries might be upgraded once the OS is upgraded. Hence the question.; and
2. Will upgrading the EasyBuild version (say from 4.0.x to the latest 4.5.x) require a rebuilding of the existing modules? Unlike the OS upgrade, am unable to see any reasons why this would be necessary - but asking so that I get some expert suggestions on this.

Thanks a lot in advance!a

[ocaisa]

You don't have to reinstall the software because you update EasyBuild (in fact it is recommended that you always use the latest version of EasyBuild whenever you install software). You will have to reinstall the software because you are changing the underlying OS, this means changing critical libraries like glibc: EasyBuild does not save you from this.

[boegel]

Actually in practice you usually don't need to reinstall software that was installed with EasyBuild when you do minor OS upgrades (for example from CentOS 8.4 to 8.5). There are no guarantees there though, and we've definitely seen minor updates causing trouble sometimes (see for example easybuilders/easybuild-easyconfigs#12107 and easybuilders/easybuild-easyconfigs#3646).

A major OS update (for example from CentOS 7.x to 8.x) is more likely to cause trouble; see for example easybuilders/easybuild-easyconfigs#10932 and easybuilders/easybuild-easyconfigs#11762.

[boegel]

I think your questions have been answered, so I'll go ahead and close this issue.

Don't hesitate to reach out in case of more questions, either by opening an issue, or by joining the EasyBuild Slack channel.