Dear easybuilders, we jumped to eb 2.7, and our Python builds became incompatible. We think the cause is:
https://github.com/hpcugent/easybuild-easyblocks/pull/817 https://github.com/hpcugent/easybuild-easyblocks/issues/651 From the Python docs at https://docs.python.org/2/c-api/unicode.html: Note that UCS2 and UCS4 Python builds are not binary compatible. Please keep this in mind when writing extensions or interfaces. From the python.py easyblock: # Need to be careful to match the unicode settings to the underlying python The reasoning seems to be that the eb Python should be compatible with Python packages provided by the OS. IMHO, this is less important than ensuring binary compatibility between Python releases that are built by different easybuild releases. Actually I think, one of the benefits of easybuild is that the resulting binaries are not so much dependent on the underlying OS version. The introduced change achieves the opposite. One of the reasons why we use easybuild is to create reproducible software builds. For that scenario, would you recommend sticking with a frozen easybuild release? Please let me know what you think. Best regards, Olaf
