ChimeraX Developer Meeting

Attendance: Zach, Greg, Tom, Eric

October 27, 2025

Agenda

• flatpak nightly build not working.
• Qt updates to fix Mac crashes in Qt 6.9.2.
  • Crash in swap_buffers #19178
  • Crash in NSAccessibility #19187
  • OpenGL error after wake from sleep #19185
  • Crash in NSAutoreleasePool #19180
  • Tabbed tools don't show tabs often #19078
• ChimeraX 1.11 release schedule
• Chimera not working with macOS 26, graphics pane positioned over command-line.
• Work in progress reports
• Inside ribbon color?
• Make Chimera end-of-life bug report and registration changes.
• Back up the Chimera build machine to a solid state drive, Windows 7.
• Linux ARM64 release and download page

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Discussion

• flatpak nightly build
  • Zach and Greg will look at what space issue is preventing the flatpak build from succeeding.

• Qt version for ChimeraX 1.11 release
  • Plan is to release ChimeraX 1.11 with Qt 6.9.2 despite the many Mac bugs.
  • PyQt 6.10 is out but has known problems reported on PyQt mailing list, and we have little time to have users test it.
  • There is no PyQt6-Qt6 6.9.3 available and unclear if Riverbank will release one.
  • Could drop Qt 6.9.3 libraries into PyQt 6.9.2 if it fixed problems.
  • Of the Qt 6.9.2 bugs we are only able to reproduce the missing tabs on stacked tools. Tom will try PyQt 6.10 to see if that fixes it, if so will try Qt 6.9.3. If not try removing our floating tool on-top code to see if problem is related to that.
  • If we have no fix for broken stacked tool tabs we will still release 1.11 mid-December.

• ChimeraX 1.11 release candidates
  • Plan to start release candidates Monday Dec 10, 2025.
  • That gives us 5 weeks until a Dec 15 release.
  • Later than Dec 15 may mean pushing release until after holidays.
  • Greg and Zach will look at active 1.11 tickets which we will review next Monday at ChimeraX meeting.

• Windows installer signing
  • Greg will have Windows installer signing working before ChimeraX 1.11 release.
  • Will look at whether Chimera signing can be easily fixed.

• Chimera Mac Tahoe
  • Eric has not had time to work on fixing graphics pane positioning problem.
  • Hovering mouse over window resize control fixes it, so it is not as pressing.

• Scenes
  • Eric made several scene improvements.
  • Active coordinate set properly restored.
  • Add and Update separate buttons on GUI.
  • Arrows in scenes now save in sessions.
  • No drag and drop reordering yet.

• Animation tool
  • Zach is testing interpolating code moved from tool into model classes.

• cryoEM workshop at SLAC
  • Tom at SLAC cryoEM workshop Tuesday through Thursday.
  • Tom gives animation tutorial Wed 2 pm.
  • Tristan gives ISOLDE tutorial Wed 3:30 pm.

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Action Items