= ChimeraX Developer Meeting =

Attendance: Eric, Zach, Tom, Greg

July 18, 2022

= Agenda =

* Tristan wants devtoolset-9 CentOS 7 ChimeraX for compiling ABI compatible ISOLDE.
* Github Actions continuous integration
* Mac M1 port
* QtPy shim
* Make installing on the Mac more obvious
  * More download Notes?
  * README in .dmg?

== General ==

== ChimeraX ==
=== General ===

=== Build System ===
1) Supporting IDEs
  - may only need editable installs (will require workaround as namespace packages cannot be installed in this mode automatically)
  - editable installs should also let us call ChimeraX with Python for rapid iteration and the C launcher for detailed crash info
  - Zach mentioned PyCharm, LSP (Language Server Protocol), XCode
  - Greg mentioned Visual Studio 

2) API for getting C headers: get_include (see: numpy.get_include)
  - {{{native-packaging}}} moves bundle header and source files to {{{bundle/src/include/module}}} \
  - maybe just use header files?

3) API for getting library directories: get_libdir

4) macOS compiler call in Makefiles

=== Infrastructure ===
1) Beta releases on Toolshed

2) Decoupling core bundle version number from the ChimeraX release number

3) Prereq audit after 27 June 

4) arm64 port

== Chimera ==
1) Back up the build machine to a solid state drive

--------------------------
= Discussion =

* Tristan wants devtoolset-9 CentOS 7 ChimeraX for compiling ABI compatible ISOLDE.
  - To compile ISOLDE on Linux compatible with our distributions Tristan needs CentOS 7
  - We no longer distribute CentOS 7 ChimeraX so Tristan would have to build his own from scratch.
  - Tom thinks he is asking for a CentOS 7 ChimeraX so he does not have to build it.
  - Greg suggests maybe we should switch to use Debian 10 as our base Linux and that would be used for Toolshed packages that use C++.

* Github Actions continuous integration
  - Zach has Linux and Mac builds working
  - Some trouble with OpenSSL on CentOS 8.  Greg says use Makefile.centos which tells ChimeraX not to build openssl.
  - Zach tried Windows build using WSL instead of Cygwin.  Had problems because system identifies itself as Ubuntu.
  - Greg thinks simplest to keep the Windows builds using Cygwin for now.
  - Zach says Linux Github build sometimes fails to get plato prereqs.  Seems to be firewall issue.
  - Discussed looking for some cloud hosting for the prereq binaries we include in ChimeraX.

* Mac M1 port
  - Phil Thompson found PyQt6 problem in commercial wheels.
  - Riverbank license code modifies QtCore.abi3.so (part of PyQt6) invalidating its code signature and does not re-sign it.  M1 Mac fails on this, although Intel Mac is fine.
  - Phil said he will take out license check on Mac until he finds a solution.
  - He adds the license check using Linux so can[t easily re-sign the Mac library.

* QtPy shim
  - Zach tried using QtPy instead of our Qt shim and it worked after adding our 4 custom shim functions (e.g. that check if Qt object is deleted).
  - Says QtPy developers might put our 4 functions.
  - Tom suggests our Qt shim is so simple that replacing with QtPy is not worth the effort.
  - Would need to keep Qt namespace for plugins.
  - Tom says qtpy developers showed little interest in Qt 6 a year ago. They seem to maintain it just for their Python IDE (Spider?).  So switch to it may not reduce our maintenance.

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= Action Items =
  - Present github continuous integration tutorial.  Zach