Hi Riccardo,
On 01/18/2013 02:30 PM, Riccardo Murri wrote:
Hi Kenneth, all,
(Kenneth Hoste, Wed, Jan 16, 2013 at 03:12:40PM +0100:)
So, no we've agreed that we disagree, are you satisfied with what
EasyBuild currently provides, or do you feel we should really add
support for using what the system provides? It's not impossible, and
probably even not that hard, but since we won't be working that way
I doubt we'll spend much time on it.
Well, the reason to have a look at "easybuild" was to replace our own
in-house compilation scripts with a community-supported framework.
The test case was OpenFOAM, which is a new application for us so we
didn't have any compilation scripts ready.
However, `eb` on Ubuntu 12.04 LTS failed rather early when compiling
GCC (full debug output attached). Since compilation with
system-provided tools is not supported, definition of a new toolchain
looked like requiring quite a few edits, and I gather that
Ubuntu/Debian in general is a platform that you're not testing on,
this means that I would have to put in more effort than I can afford
right now before I start using the tool and seeing its benefits...
While I was trying out `eb` and discussing on the mailing list, my
colleagues managed to compile OpenFOAM with the system tools and
integrate its building process into our existing scripts.
So, though I appreciate the care that you have put into this tool
(which is evident by the detailed and cleanly written debug logs,
something that I wish all software would have!), I guess it's a no-go
for us now but we'll certainly keep an eye on the project.
Many thanks to all for the friendliness and the interesting discussions!
You should have brought this up earlier, as this is a known issue on
Ubuntu...
It's actually not (really) an EasyBuild problem, but an issue with some
OS packages. We have the problem documented at
https://github.com/hpcugent/easybuild/wiki/OS-specific-notes (see the
Ubuntu 11.0 section), and it's easy to fix (basically just set
LIBRARY_PATH correctly). Another known issue can be resolved by
installing libc6-dev-i386 (even if you don't want 32-bit support).
Please look into those notes, and let us know if that helps.
Two sysadmins at the Gregor Mendel Institute of Molecular Plant Biology
in Vienna (Austria) have reported good experiences with EasyBuild on
Ubuntu after taking into account those notes on the wiki page mentioned.
Maybe we should look into a way to resolve the issue in EasyBuild
itself, and at least try and make a proper suggestion on how to fix it...
I'm actually quite impressed that you guys were able to quickly
integrate OpenFOAM into your build framework, because it has a pretty
nasty build procedure.
Are your scripts available somewhere? I'm sure we can learn something
there...
Hopefully, the upcoming release can make you reconsider EasyBuild, since
we have a lot of good stuff coming up in it, e.g. support for NWChem and
QuantumESPRESSO, among others, which are notoriously nasty to build as well.
Thanks for sharing your experiences, I really appreciate that.
regards,
Kenneth
Cheers,
Riccardo
--
Riccardo Murri
http://www.gc3.uzh.ch/people/rm
Grid Computing Competence Centre
University of Zurich
Winterthurerstrasse 190, CH-8057 Zürich (Switzerland)
Tel: +41 44 635 4222
Fax: +41 44 635 6888
