# Notes for 20211202 meeting

# 20211202 meeting notes

* date & time: Thu December 2nd 2021 - 14:00 CET (13:00 UTC)
* (every first Thursday of the month)
* venue: *(online, see mail for meeting link, or ask in Slack)*
* agenda:
- Quick introduction by new people
- EESSI-related meetings in last month
- Progress update per EESSI layer
- 2021.12 version of pilot repository
- Testing updates
- AWS/Azure sponsorship update
- Update on EESSI journal paper
- EESSI hackathon(s)
- Upcoming events
- Q&A

### Slides

* https://github.com/EESSI/meetings/blob/main/meetings/EESSI_meeting_20211202.pdf

### Meeting notes

*(by Kenneth, Bob)*

#### Quick introduction by new people

* *(no new people)*

#### EESSI-related meetings in last month

##### CernVM-FS coordination meeting

*(see slides)*

##### Brainstorm meeting about 2021.12 pilot repo

- detailed notes in https://github.com/EESSI/meetings/wiki/Brainstorm-meeting-2020.12-pilot-Nov-15th-2021

##### Lightning talk on EESSI at HPC System Testing Birds-of-a-Feather @ SC’21

- Recording is available on Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ALpZhUDHjIs

##### Brainstorm about software deployment and testing

- detailed notes at https://github.com/EESSI/meetings/wiki/Brainstorm-meeting-software-deployment-Nov-24th-2021

##### Brainstorm meeting about GitHub App for software-layer repo

- relevant for both building and testing software
- detailed notes at: https://github.com/EESSI/meetings/wiki/Brainstorm-meeting-github-app-software-layer-Nov-26th-2021
- existing example bot by Kenneth available at https://github.com/boegel/boegelbot/tree/main/app can be used as a starting point for this GitHub App

#### Progress update per EESSI layer

##### Filesystem layer

- Next pilot will have a `versions` directory, and variant symlinks `modules` and `software` in the root, which can be controlled by site admins.
- Terje: won't this cause any issues for software that links against software with the `software` symlink in the path?
- This should not happen, as the modulefiles will have the real path.
- Kurt: be careful with (variant) symlinks and hierarchical module schemes, as this can lead to weird issues.
- We can test this with the next pilot, and if we really run into such issues, we can always remove the variant symlinks again.

##### Compatibility layer

- Terje: should we document which verions can be built on top of the EESSI stack?
- You can work around them with EasyBuild by using an new compiler as build dependency (for example using GCC 8.x built with EasyBuild to build GCC 7.x, etc.)
- We can provide old compilers in the software layer (or even in the compat layer, side by side, if needed)
- Having a `Known issues` page in the documentation, listing such issues and possible workarounds, may be useful.
- Jörg: would be good to provide old GCC versions.
- We can even install those in Gentoo Prefix.
- We can go back if there is a need for it, but we don't want to support e.g. GCC 4.
- https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Changes/BINUTILS_GOLD
- https://github.com/rui314/mold

##### Software layer

*(see slides)*

##### 2021.12 version of pilot repository

*(see slides)*

##### Testing updates

*(see slides)*

#### AWS/Azure sponsorship update

*(see slides)*

#### Update on EESSI journal paper

*(see slides)*

#### EESSI hackathon(s)

- Quite a lot of interest! Therefore, we picked two weeks instead of one
- AWS announced some new instances this week:
- Graviton 3 (not available yet, only as preview)
- `G5g` instances with Arm Graviton2 CPUs and NVIDIA T4G Tensor Core GPUs
- Everybody agrees that this hackathon is a brilliant idea :-)

#### Upcoming events

- CIUK is still taking place as in-person conference, but face masks are required
- Jörg is planning to go, and mention EESSI where applicable

#### Q&A

- Jaco: no news on setting up the EESSI consortium, work on this will be continued in 2022.
- Jaco: there will be an innovation lab in Groningen, with early access to new hardware. This will also be interesting for EESSI, as we can test and prepare software builds on the latest hardware.