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Conference call notes 20251105

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Kenneth Hoste edited this page Nov 19, 2025 · 7 revisions

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Notes on the 282st EasyBuild conference call, Wednesday 05 Nov 2025 (08:00 UTC / 10:00 CET)

Attendees

List of attendees (16):

  • Bob Dröge (Univ. of Groningen, The Netherlands)
  • Alex Domingo (Vrije Universiteit Brussel, Belgium)
  • Loris Ercole (CECAM)
  • Davide Grassano (CECAM)
  • Jasper Grimm (University of York, UK)
  • Jorge Delgado Guerrero (University of Luxembourg)
  • Leonardo Honfi (Wageningen University)
  • Georgios Kafanas (University of Luxembourg)
  • Kurt Lust (UAntwerpen / LUMI)
  • Alan O'Cais (freelancer)
  • Mikael Öhman (Chalmers University of Technology, Sweden)
  • Jarne Renders (Vrije Universiteit Brussel, Belgium)
  • Jan Reuter (JSC, Germany)
  • Jörg Sassmannhausen (Imperial College London)
  • Helena Vela (DoITNow)
  • Cintia Willemyns (Vrije Universiteit Brussel, Belgium)

Agenda

  • overview of recent developments
  • update of common toolchains
  • Q&A

Recent developments

  • latest EasyBuild release: EasyBuild v5.1.2 (26 Sept 2025)
  • next (stable) EasyBuild release: EasyBuid v5.2.0 (ETA: mid Nov'25)
    • incl. support for LLVM-based toolchain, NVHPC toolchain, etc.

News

  • LLVM-based toolchain

    • GCCcore as base
    • LLVM C and FORTRAN compilers on top
    • Main framework PR in https://github.com/easybuilders/easybuild-framework/pull/4914
    • The basisc are there, can already be tested and used to build stuff
    • (Alan) will this lead to an explosion of PRs? variants of the same software for foss, intel, llvm?
      • (Jorg) current situatuin with Intel is that it is only used with things that needed
      • (Jan) taking into account nvidia-compilers and variants with/without CUDA that can also lead to even more easyconfigs
      • (Alex) easyconfig will still be different enough to not allow for toolchain-agnostig solutions to be implemented
      • (Miket) we also want to test each combination of version/toolchain that we ship with EB

  • NVHPC toolchain rework

    • change on default cuda detection will be merged and adapted to open PRs (https://github.com/easybuilders/easybuild-easyblocks/pull/3924)
    • following-up on Slack discussion: GCCcore is already a dep of nvidia-compilers so that avoids relying on host system
    • new nvidia-compilers/NVHPC toolchian is well tested in VUB and JUWELS, already work being done to use in ESSII as well
    • modifying the NVHPC ecosystem with custom MPI implementation or external numerical libraries is painful and breaks very easily

  • CUDA compute capabilities

    • (Caspar) compute capabilities from version 9.x can have a revision component (e.g. 9.0a)
      • nothing: architecture specific features are disabled
      • a: architecture specific, just current minor supported
      • f: family specific, current minor and future ones
    • explanation in https://docs.nvidia.com/cuda/cuda-c-programming-guide/#feature-set-compiler-targets
    • (Caspar) what should EB do to handle all these new exytra options?
      • proposal to just use current cuda_compute_capabilities framework using definition including those letters
      • (Alexander) not trivial to implement as current code does not assume letters in cuda_compute_capabilities elements. This applies at all levels, not just framework code in EB, but support in other tools like CMake or any specific easyconfig
      • (Alex) the default should change as well, so we need to decide how EB will handle those letters and what default will be set by EB
      • (Caspar) handling this through the existing cuda_compute_capabilities allows to have complex definitions with different settings for PTX and device code parts
      • (Alex) positive thing is that compute capabilities without the letter continue to work, so this change can be gradually implemented wherever it is supported
      • (Mikael) might not be trivial to populate templates with complex definitions of cuda compute capabilities
      • (Caspar) one option would be to bypass build systems and just directly pass those flags to nvcc

Merge sprints

  • future easyconfigs merge sprints planned:
    • Mon 15 Dec 2025
    • Mon 16 Feb 2026
    • Mon 13 Apr 2026
    • Mon 15 Jun 2026
    • Mon 17 Aug 2026
    • aiming for semi-fixed schedule every other month: 3rd Monday in even months

Merged PRs

(changed made in PRs marked with * are included latest EasyBuild stable release)

  • blog/docs (merged PRs)

    • ...

  • framework (merged PRs)

    • bug fixes
      • unset PROMPT_COMMAND in cmd.sh shell PR #5034
    • enhancements
      • Print runtime of all builds PR #5032
      • hook updating OpenSSL dep to v 3 PR #5035
    • changes
      • ...
    • code cleanup
      • ...
    • CI/test suite
      • ...

  • easyblocks (merged PRs)

    • bug fixes
      • Honor user-defined configopts in LLVM easyblock (PR #3967)
      • fix crash in LLVM easyblock when doing module-only or sanity-check-only rebuild (PR #3977)
      • Show summary of relevant LLVM test failures (PR #3962)
      • Move setting of $PYTHON* environment variables to load_module method in Python easyblock (PR #3958)
    • enhancements
      • ...
    • updates
      • ABAQUS: add missing question pattern when building 2025 without hotfixes (PR #3980)
    • changes
      • ...
    • new
      • ...
    • code cleanup
      • ...
    • CI
      • ...

  • easyconfigs (merged PRs)

    • Around 100 easyconfig PRs were merged since last conf call \o/
    • bug fixes/reports
      • ...
    • enhancements
      • ...
    • (noteworthy) new software
      • ...
    • noteworthy software updates
      • ...
    • cleanup
      • ...
    • changes
      • ...

Open (active) PRs

  • blog/docs (open PRs + issues)

  • framework (open PRs + issues)

    • bugs
      • pass dependencies to toolchain.prepare when setting up build environment for extensions (PR #5023)
        • fixes a problem with not finding header files provided by dependencies when using --search-path-cpp-headers=include_paths because $C_INCLUDE_PATH & co set by toolchain only include paths for toolchain components
      • Pass correct -march option on RISC-V systems when optarch toolchain option is enabled (PR #5029)
    • enhancements
      • Make specifying exts_defaultclass optional (PR #4800)
      • new LLVM based toolchain (PR #4914)
      • make EasyBuild plugin-able through entrypoints (PR #4918)
      • make NVHPC a full toolchain with nvidia-compilers, NVHPCX and NVBLAS (PR #4927)
      • click CLI wrapper around normal CLI (PR #4961)
      • Add --keep-going option to fail at the end not at first failing installation (PR #5022)
      • Add templates for source with just version numbers (PR #5025)
      • Add templates for patch versions (PR #5028)
    • code cleanup
      • ...
    • changes
      • Deprecate support for running EasyBuild with Python < 3.9 (PR #4966)
    • tests
      • Add decorator to ignore PR test failures due to rate limit (PR #5019)

  • easyblocks (open PRs + issues)

    • bug fixes/reports
      • Potentially wrong cblas.h in OpenBLAS installations with 64bit support (issue #3872)
      • Update Clang easyblock for fixed 'finalpath' source attributes (PR #3961)
    • enhancements
    • updates
      • Update CP2K easyblock for v2024 and v2025 (PR #3892)
      • Update LAMMPS easyblock: v2025 fix + extra tests (PR #3894)
      • Update jaxlib easyblock for jax 0.6.2 with CUDA-12.6.0 (PR #3951)
    • changes
      • ...
    • code cleanup
      • ...
    • new easyblocks
      • new easyblock for systemd_wrapper (WIP PR #3963)
        • use case for this was xorg-server, but also other things like nvtop eed udev

  • easyconfigs (open PRs + issues)

    • bug fixes/reports
      • add patch to Python easyconfigs to fix ctypes when $LD_LIBRARY_PATH is not being set (PR #23499)
      • Fix mlir-pdll-lsp-server of Clang-18 (PR #24327)
      • Fix python-igraph EasyConfigs to use installed igraph (PR #24288)
    • enhancements
      • ...
    • (noteworthy) new software
      • Fluxbox + Openbox window managers (PR #24280) + jgmenu (PR #24323)
        • (Mikael) some recent progress with xfce + Wayland on accelerated desktop environment
          • Xorg is a dead end, we should focus on next-gen solution like Wayland instead
    • software updates
      • PyTorch v2.3.0 w/ foss/2023b + CUDA 12.4.0 (PR #23553)
      • PyTorch v2.6.0 w/ foss/2024a + CUDA 12.6.0 (PR #23433)
      • PyTorch v2.7.1 w/ foss/2024a + CUDA 12.6.0 (PR #23923)
      • CP2K v2025.2 w/ foss/2025a (PR #23696)
      • NVHPC 25.9 (PR #23989)
    • changes
      • ...

Common toolchains

2026a

  • ETA early 2026
  • will likely use GCC 15.x as base...

Q&A / other

  • (Davide) https://github.com/easybuilders/easybuild-framework/pull/5038
    • (Davide) rebuilds can break whenever the the linker picks the "old" lib still present in the install directory instead of the new one just rebuilt (in build/test directory)
    • (Alex) changing that precedence order seems to defeat the purpose of having those absolute RPATHs to install dire at all, since the relative ones (through ``$ORIGIN`) will be used every single time. Also not clear if this can break other situations

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