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Overcoming Challenges to Continuous Integration in HPC

Journal Article · · Computing in Science and Engineering
Continuous integration (CI) has become a ubiquitous practice in modern software development, with major code hosting services offering free automation on popular platforms. CI offers major benefits, as it enables detecting bugs in code prior to committing changes. While high-performance computing (HPC) research relies heavily on software, HPC machines are not considered “common” platforms. This presents several challenges that hinder the adoption of CI in HPC environments, making it difficult to maintain bug-free HPC projects, and resulting in adverse effects on the research community. Here we explore the challenges that impede HPC CI, such as hardware diversity, security, isolation, administrative policies, and non-standard authentication, environments, and job submission mechanisms. We propose several solutions that could enhance the quality of HPC software and the experience of developers. Implementing these solutions would require significant changes at HPC centers, but if these changes are made, it would ultimately enable faster and better science.
Research Organization:
Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL), Livermore, CA (United States)
Sponsoring Organization:
USDOE National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA)
Grant/Contract Number:
AC52-07NA27344
OSTI ID:
2283634
Report Number(s):
LLNL--JRNL-846623; 1071069
Journal Information:
Computing in Science and Engineering, Journal Name: Computing in Science and Engineering Journal Issue: 6 Vol. 24; ISSN 1521-9615
Publisher:
IEEE Computer SocietyCopyright Statement
Country of Publication:
United States
Language:
English

References (3)

Feasibility of Running Singularity Containers with Hybrid MPI on NASA High-End Computing Resources conference November 2021
EasyBuild: Building Software with Ease conference November 2012
The Spack package manager: bringing order to HPC software chaos
  • Gamblin, Todd; LeGendre, Matthew; Collette, Michael R.
  • Proceedings of the International Conference for High Performance Computing, Networking, Storage and Analysis on - SC '15 https://doi.org/10.1145/2807591.2807623
conference January 2015

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