ChimeraX Developer Meeting

Attendance: Zach, Eric, Tom, Greg

April 6, 2026

Agenda

• Switch from PySide to PyQt.
• Progress on DockerHub ChimeraX.
• Inside ribbon color?
• Toolshed reduce query result size.
• Residue notes in mmCIF, Oliver Clarke
• Chimera not working with macOS 26, graphics pane positioned over command-line.
• Work in progress reports
• Make Chimera end-of-life bug report and registration changes.

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Discussion

• Switch from PySide to PyQt.
  • Zach will switch ChimeraX daily build from PySide 6.10.1 to PyQt 6.10.2 today.
  • We would prefer to try Qt 6.10.3 out 5 days ago that has 250 bug fixes beyond 6.10.2, but PyQt has not released of 6.10.3 version and probably will not release one.
  • We could copy the Qt 6.10.3 libraries into ChimeraX with PyQt 6.10.2.
  • First let's try PyQt 6.10.2 with Qt 6.10.2. Then if we can consider and test in our devel builds using Qt 6.10.3.

• DockerHub ChimeraX
  • Zach will make a docker image with ChimeraX without Qt libraries and Rocky 9 to put on DockerHub for PDBe to use addh in workflows.
  • Discussed whether --nogui option will be required. Could possibly specify the --nogui option in the docker config file so the image can run ChimeraX without explicitly using --nogui.

• Inside ribbon color?
  • Eric and Tom will work on adding ribbon inside color.
  • Was requested recently on mailing list.
  • Also requested several times in past years.

• Toolshed reduce query result size.
  • Toolshed updates query currently uses cached result for each ChimeraX version 1.2 - 1.12.
  • Greg wants to make those files smaller by including only last 3 compatible releases of each package.
  • Greg will see how much that reduces updates download size.

• Residue notes in mmCIF, Oliver Clarke
  • Oliver Clarke proposes putting residue notes in mmCIF files in a new table including note author and time stamp.
  • Oliver has this capability in Coot already.
  • Wants ChimeraX to be able to read and write these notes.
  • Oliver made a ChimeraX bundle to read and write notes. Not on Toolshed.
  • Greg will advise Oliver that label_asym_id should be used not auth_asym_id.
  • Not clear why Oliver would not just submit a ChimeraX toolshed bundle for this. Maybe he wants tighter integration in mmcif reader/writer, or just wants it to be present without user having to install separately.

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Action Items