ChimeraX Developer Meeting

Attendance: Zach, Greg, Piet, Tom, Eric

March 10, 2025

Agenda

• Toolshed cache never initialized #16830
• ViewDockX port to Qt
• Work in progress reports
• 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

• Toolshed cache not updating
  • Greg says he believes this is fixed.
  • Time out had been changed to a short 3 seconds to avoid the cache update thread blocking ChimeraX exit.
  • Greg has lengthened timeout to 12 seconds.
  • Discussed whether a daemon thread could be used so that ChimeraX exit is not blocked by the cache update thread. Greg will look.

• ViewDock
  • Discussed how to start ViewDock from the Tools menu which requires an Open dialog appear, versus starting it from other bundles that have already opened the docking data.
  • Piet made routine to show ViewDock gui.
  • ViewDock gui does not yet do anything.

• KVFinder crashes
  • Crashes on Windows have been fixed.
  • Eric found KVFinder crashing on Windows only due to exceeding C stack size limit.
  • ChimeraX executable was using stack limit that was half the limit set by Python.
  • Greg made ChimeraX executable use larger stack limit.

• BlueSky
  • Tom posted 5 images on BlueSky, followers increased 400 to 470.
  • ChimeraX has 7000 followers on X. X has 10-20x more total users than BlueSky, so not clear how many of our X followers will be reachable on BlueSky.
  • Tried to change BlueSky account email to chimerax-bluesky. Could not get confirmation email from BlueSky with that email. Zach has reverted BlueSky email to his CGL email.
  • Greg got domain name chimerax.ucsf.edu to use as BlueSky handle @chimerax.ucsf.edu. Currently using @www.cgl.ucsf.edu. Need new url certificate update that Greg will do today.

• ChimeraX Roadmap
  • Added several items to ChimeraX roadmap. New command parser, MD plotting, Scenes, ViewDock, Boltz structure prediction, Sony and Acer 3d display, Linux ARM builds, Toolshed using new PyPi protocol.

• Linux build distribution
  • Discussed ways to improve Linux distribution if ChimeraX show license at first startup.
  • Could host repositories (PPA) so Linux users could install in the customary way.
  • Zach says ChimeraX download page will have 12 instead of 6 linux builds if he adds ARM versions.

• ChimeraX on plato
  • Zach asks if Greg can make ChimeraX daily build install on plato every day.
  • Greg says he will add that.

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Action Items