ChimeraX Developer Meeting

Attendance: Zach, Greg, Tom, Eric

September 15, 2025

Agenda

• Take PySide tech preview off download page until currently reported 8 bugs are fixed?
• Updating prereqs.
• 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

• PySide tech preview
  • Greg took the tech preview off the download page now so we don't continue to get the known PySide bugs that we have not fixed.
  • We have about 8 PySide serious bugs (crashes, broken log links, ...) that would need to be fixed, then we could try tech preview and if that sees few additional bugs then daily build with PySide.
  • Have just 3 months until next ChimeraX release so bugs would need to be fixed in coming weeks in order to get PySide into the next ChimeraX release.
  • Zach will decide whether to work on PySide or other priorities. If not PySide then we reconsider it for the Spring release.

• Prereq updates
  • Eric has updated shell related prereqs.
  • Tom needs to update volume related prereqs ideally this week.

• MD minimization
  • Eric has openmm doing minimization but there are a few issues with metal coordination and glycans that need fixing before he announces it.

• Match align
  • Eric has a C++ version of match align (compute sequence alignment from structure superposition) in debugging phase.

• Tom presentations
  • Late october is cryoEM workshop where we will give ChimeraX animation tutorial.
  • Late october also has bay area science festival at UCSF. Still consider if we can present something other than VR.
  • Meeting with John Gross to discuss dates and content of January macromethods course structure prediction segment.

• LookSee distribution
  • Tom asked neighbor who works for Meta for any secret tricks to get special Meta treatment so we can make a Meta organization for distributing LookSee.
  • Currently our VR is at a dead-end with Meta not allowing us to distribute effectively from their Quest app store.

• Windows installer signing
  • Greg has yubi key for windows signing plugged into to our vizvault Windows 11 machine and is still reading about how to use it.
  • Discussed how to add Download web page note about Windows install warnings (just edit releases.json on plato).

• vr.ucsf.edu broken links
  • Greg has list of of broken links for vr.ucsf.edu web site, will send to Tom.
  • Tom will make sure that web site prominently says it is not being updated, and will fix or remove broken links.

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Action Items