Attendees

Eric, Greg, Zach, TomG

On-site in N453.

Agenda

• ChimeraX
  • Qt 6 problems.
  • Windows open dialog crashes.
  • Make ChimeraX 1.4 roadmap.
  • Upgrade Trac to mysql for better reliability.
  • Is Windows crash reporting ever useful? Should we disable it? Will Qt 6.2 fix spurious file dialog errors?
  • Should we remove pywin32 (20 MBytes) and wmi used only to report computer model in bug reporter on Windows? Ticket #5528
  • Task termination at app quit
  • Rename ChimeraX.exe on Windows?
  • Does pip need to be stabilized?
  • Do we still need Tristan's compiled OpenMM, can we get it from conda?
  • Do we still need six (Python 2/3 compatibility package)?

• Chimera
  • Switch Chimera daily builds from Windows 7 to Windows 10

• Webservices
  • Where should internal documentation live?

• Action items

Discussion

• Native Mac M1 ChimeraX port
  • Intel Ambertools works with M1 ChimeraX since it is emulated. TomG tested it.
  • OpenMM 7.7.0 has conda-forge Mac arm64 build, tested and included in M1 ChimeraX by TomG.
  • Three remaining libraries not ported PyTables, imagecodecs, netcdf4
  • All 3 of these unported libraries are on conda-forge for mac arm64

• Qt 6 for ChimeraX 1.4 release
  • Qt 5 on only Linux and Qt 6 on other platforms for ChimeraX 1.4 will mess up developers.
  • Tony Shaefer, author of SEQCROW ran into a few Qt 5 vs Qt 6 problems.
  • Various options for how to make separate Qt 5 and Qt 6 releases:
    • Could simply not have a Qt 5 ChimeraX 1.4 for old Linux. Optionally Greg might get a Qt 6 release going on CentOS 7 with flatpack or singularity, but otherwise ChimeraX 1.3 would be last release for old Linux. Need to get Scooter to agree.
    • Could delay ChimeraX 1.4 release while Greg tries ways to get Qt 6 distributed for old Linux.
    • Could release ChimeraX 1.4 with Qt 5 on all platforms and same day release ChimeraX 1.5 with Qt 6 on supported platforms (not old Linux).
    • Eric proposed asking Scooter which option he prefers.
  • Discussed with Scooter options in 6 pm meeting with all developers
    • He suggests we make ChimeraX 1.4 all distributions Qt 6
    • If Greg can make singularity or flatpack qt 6 ChimeraX for old Linux that is good.
    • If Qt 6 won't work with old Linux then we call ChimeraX 1.3 last release for CentOS 7.

• Windows crash reports
  • Get many Windows crash reports per day with Open dialog tracebacks.
  • Some open dialog tracebacks in crash reports are not fatal, and actual crash may not be related.
  • Eric suggests trying non-native Open dialog with select users who have reported and might reproduce the crash.
  • TomG made Open dialog clear the crash file when the dialog is closed so non-fatal errors do not confound the crash reports. Changed added March 23.
  • TomG trying to make Open dialog modeless so no sub-event loop is run.
    • Mac puts modeless Open dialog on top of all other applications which is unusable.
    • On Mac can still use modal Open dialog but with no sub-eventloop using QFileDialog.open() instead of exec().

Action Items

• Present github continuous integration tutorial. Zach
• Remove pkg-config prereq if it is not being used for builds. Tom