If the release candidate is available when they say and we can do
most of the testing against that, I don't see it being a big risk to
try and include it and it won't hurt to help test the RC.
I see that they have changed their versioning so that 5.2 is a less
significant change than it would have been under the 4.x series.
On Mon, Jun 29, 2015 at 6:59 AM Kenneth Hoste
<[email protected] <mailto:[email protected]>> wrote:
Hi all,
GCC 4.8.5 and 4.9.3 were released last week, but more
importantly w.r.t.
the 2015b common toolchains: GCC 5.2.0 (bugfix release for GCC
5.1.0) is
planned to be released July 10th 2015 (see
https://gcc.gnu.org/ml/gcc/2015-06/msg00202.html).
That opens up the discussion again: should we hold off
finalizing the
foss/2015b (+ gompi/2015b) and intel/2015b definitions until GCC
5.2.0
is available, so we can use it as a base rather than our current
pick
GCC 5.1.0?
If the release of GCC 5.2 happens effectively on July 10th, it
may be
doable to still make that change and have sufficient time for
(re)testing, but it'll be quite tight...
Thoughts?
regards,
Kenneth
On 17/06/15 12:50, Kenneth Hoste wrote:
> Hello EasyBuilders,
>
> With summer approaching rapidly (I'm sure you're aware), it's
time to
> look into defining the 2015b update of the common compiler
toochains
> 'foss' and 'intel'.
>
> For those of you not aware yet: the common toolchains are an
attempt
> at synchronizing the major toolchains being used with
EasyBuild across
> different sites, to try and reap the benefits of each others
efforts
> even more. The idea is to refresh these toolchains every 6 months.
>
> It's important to note that we are not enforcing these
toolchains on
> anyone: it's up to you whether you join in or not, and other
> toolchains and toolchain versions will of course remain
supported as
> they have been in the past (with the exception of some old
toolchains
> that I'd like to deprecate sometime soon (goalf, iqacml), but
more on
> that later).
>
> I've taken the liberty to come up with a proposal for
foss/2015b and
> intel/2015b, see also the respective pull requests
> https://github.com/hpcugent/easybuild-easyconfigs/pull/1695 and
> https://github.com/hpcugent/easybuild-easyconfigs/pull/1696.
>
> foss/2015b:
> GCC v5.1.0
> binutils/2.25 (which implies also including zlib/1.2.8)
> OpenMPI v1.8.5 (note: with 1.8.6 likely to be released
very soon,
> this may get bumped before the definition is cast into stone)
> OpenBLAS 0.2.14
> FFTW 3.3.4
> ScaLAPACK 2.0.2
>
> intel/2015b:
> (GCC v5.1.0 + binutils/2.25)
> Intel compilers (icc + ifort) 2015.3.187 (a.k.a. 15.0.3.187)
> Intel MPI v5.0.3.048
> Intel MKL v11.2.3.187
>
> A couple of notes on this:
>
> * The most significant change is including binutils into these
> toolchains (which also reels in zlib).
> The reason for this is analogous to the reason for
including GCC in
> the intel toolchain: to be independent from what the OS provides.
> This is very relevant for RHEL6-based Haswell systems,
where the
> standard binutils version included is too old to support AVX2
(cfr.
> https://github.com/hpcugent/easybuild-easyconfigs/issues/1605), as
> several EasyBuild sites have discovered.
>
> * After careful consideration, we bumped the GCC version to
the latest
> an greatest 5.1.0, despite it being a new major version.
> There are several reasons for this, including better OpenMP
4.0 and
> C+11 support in GCC 5.1.0, and the 2nd most recent 4.9.2 being
rather
> old (Oct'14).
>
> Other communities have explored the impact of moving to GCC
5.1.0
> (e.g.
>
https://lists.fedoraproject.org/pipermail/devel/2015-February/207549.html).
> Although the impact significant, it's limited to a small set of
> packages, and the pros outweigh the cons in my opinion.
>
> * Other changes include bumping the versions to the latest and
greatest.
>
>
> Preliminary testing using Python and Boost has shown that
rebuilding
> existing 2014b easyconfigs doesn't yield too much surprises.
>
> I'm planning to run further tests in the coming weeks rebuilding
> existing easyconfigs using the 2014b toolchains, but unless major
> issues pop up, I consider these 2015b toolchain definitions solid.
>
>
> Feedback, suggestions and/or remarks are much appreciated, both in
> this mail thread and via the respective pull requests.
>
> Unless major concerns come forward, my intention is to include
these
> 2015b toolchains + several easyconfigs using them in the next
> EasyBuild release (v2.2.0, planned for end of June/early July).
>
> Last but not least: please refrain from using these 2015b
toolchains
> in production until the respective pull requests are merged. Until
> then, the toolchain definitions may still be tweaked (and probably
> will be for foss/2015b w.r.t. the OpenMPI version)!
>
>
> regards,
>
> Kenneth
