ChimeraX Developer Meeting

Attendance: Scooter, Zach, Greg, Tom, Eric

December 11, 2023

Agenda

• Are we ready to make ChimeraX 1.7 release?
• What work to propose for next NIAID contract.
• Worm ribbon implementation, ticket #9942
• Tristan Toolshed install dependency issues, Ticket #9861, blocking Clipper update #9786
• Tristan, bundle version number not reported correctly. Ticket #9873
• Log slow to update when it gets long, Tristan ticket #9909
• Create Grafana dashboards to monitor web services.
• ViewDockX port to Qt progress
• How long should code commits be added to release branch after release?
• Make Chimera end-of-life bug report and registration changes for 1.18 release in Spring 2024.
• Back up the Chimera build machine to a solid state drive, Windows 7.
• ChimeraX Ideas milestone clean-up.

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Discussion

• ChimeraX 1.7 release
  • Plan is to make release Wednesday if Greg has registration interface working when adding users to announce mailing list.
  • Eric tested Greg's mailing list registration from ChimeraX, did not work using his Google email, no invitation to join, claimed he was already subscribed which is not the case.
  • Greg tested list registration cgi script standalone and it worked.
  • Greg will investigate why ChimeraX interface to add to list does not work.
  • Chimera and ChimeraX are both using the same CGI script to add users to announce list.
  • Discussed why the new method requires sending an invitation email. Greg says it is best practices to confirm that the email address is valid. We agreed.

• Safe mode for builds
  • User installed bundles can break building ChimeraX.
  • Would like safe mode to ignore the user installed bundles.
  • This was a 1.7 ticket but has been remilestoned for 1.8.
  • Eric requests this get fixed soon, not waiting until 1.8 release.
  • Currently safe mode ignores bundle custom initialization routines but it looks at dependencies of user installed bundles and fails if dependencies are missing.
  • Greg will look at improving safe mode to not use any user installed bundles.

• Backup tape robotics
  • Eric working on finicky backup tape robotics.

• Tetrahedron residue representation
  • Tom testing Inner Space VR demonstration from Helen Berman. Application does not start.
  • Also looking at tetrahedron computing ChimeraX Python developed by Jitin Singla's lab. No command version available.

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Action Items