ChimeraX Developer Meeting

Attendance: Tom, Greg, Zach, Eric, Piet

September 9, 2024

Agenda

• Work in progress reports
• Develop ChimeraX 1.9 road map
• Progress updating prereqs
• Make Chimera end-of-life bug report and registration changes.
• Back up the Chimera build machine to a solid state drive, Windows 7.
• ChimeraX Ideas milestone clean-up.
• Move test data to /usr/local/projects/chimerax/www/data/test-data?

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Discussion

• Clipped Color dialog on Windows
  • Tristan Croll reported that color choose dialog has clipped text on Windows 10 in daily build but not 1.8.
  • Tristan's screenshot shows system color chooser.
  • Worked correctly for Eric on vive.
  • Ask Tristan to try Windows Paint program color chooser to see if it is also clipped.

• Core C++ header files not found in Clipper build
  • Tristan reports Clipper build now fails unable to find core C++ header files.
  • Zach reproduced the problem.
  • Appears that bundle_builder is not adding -I flag to compile line.
  • Zach will test if ChimeraX 1.8 is working and if so figure out the change that broke it.

• Git Action automatic builds sometimes fail
  • Eric sometimes sees Github Actions automatic build fail after he makes a commit. But daily build that night succeeds.
  • Zach asks Eric to look at what specifically failed.
  • Zach says sometimes Github fails to reach plato but then the build fails early.

• New atomspec parser
  • Eric wondering how to get some testing for the new C++ atomspec parser.
  • Probably not ready for daily build.
  • Will add debug command to enable new parser so us developers can try it.
  • C++ PEG library new atomspec parser uses makes use of exotic C++ meta-template(?) programming. Eric can show us what it looks like at some developer meeting.

• Small-angle X-ray scattering
  • Eric asks if we ever plan on porting Opal small-angle x-ray scattering web service from Chimera.
  • Tom says probably not unless some user demand, and if then we would probably look at some newer SAX prediction method.
  • Chimera used FOXS from Dina Schneidman but no longer works with Opal discontinued. Eric just got first bug report a few years after shutdown so not used much.

• Chimera end-of-life prep
  • Greg asked what needs to be done for Chimera end-of-life.
  • Don't ask for registration.
  • Don't have user fill out bug reports if we are no longer accepting them.

• ChimeraX test data
  • Zach copied ChimeraX test data to ChimeraX web site on plato www/data/test-data with subdirectories named after each bundle.
  • Script in chimerax/utils/sync-test-data.sh can fetch the test data and copy it into your source tree for use.

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Action Items