2020 10 26 Open NEST Developer Video Conference

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Agenda

1. Welcome
2. Review of NEST User Mailing List
3. Project team round
4. In-depth discussion
   • Issue #1773: wrapper around Prepare and Run (postponed from last time)
   • organizing HBP CodeJam#11 activities

Mailing list

• https://nest-simulator.org/mailinglist

Project team round

Here we discuss topics that need broader attention, for example questions that came up but are outside a single project's scope, larger planned changes/PRs that affect all teams or pending work that is blocked by external factors.

1. Models / NESTML
   • no major updates, working on NESTML synapses
2. PyNEST
   • new issue label "good first issue" for beginners to start looking into nest coding
   • removed nest.version(), replaced with nest.__version__ to be more pythonic
3. Kernel
   • no major updates
   • please ask to help with kernel issues!
4. Installation
   • not many open points
   • working on one installation issue
5. Infrastructure
   • tested artifact upload, start testing next week
   • closed MacOS caching issue #1764, but closed due to no actual advantage
6. Documentation
   • updates on GLIF model doucmentation
   • worked on documentation workflow page
   • new works on SionLIB back-end description
7. EBRAINS
   • no new inquiries, will cross check upstream
   • requests came to HPAC via HBP queue
8. (Feature) Random number generation
   • works on MacOS now, dedicated VC for Finalizathon-planning next week
9. (Feature) Automated Testing
   • no major updates
10. (Feature) Extension Module System
    • closed review issue, all updates were handled
    • minimal branch is also built on travis as an empty module
      • also empty/placeholder README
    • main branch contains documentation only in README.md
    • how to load a module, etc. should go onto the nest-simulator side.
    • still suffers from open issue of dissolving the nest-simulator:gh-pages
    • VC about user expectations of extension modules, very useful insights! Will now enter design of module system

In-depth discussion

Issue #1773: wrapper around |Prepare| and |Run| (postponed from last time)

• prepare, run, run, run, cleanup breaks when SetStatus are called inbetween.

• kernel knows if prepare/cleanup is necessary and can call them implicitly

• Running Simulations Guide would become much simpler

• manual options to call cleanup would still be available

• automatic prepare/cleanup may require warning messages

• prepare run cleanup have the purpose to explicitly make users aware (esp. in highly parallel environments)

• dedicated VC will be organized

Organizing HBP CodeJam#11 activities

• https://www.humanbrainproject.eu/en/education/participatecollaborate/infrastructure-events-trainings/codejam-11/
• Points in program
  • currently waiting for EBRAINS Documentation integration slot assignment @sarakonradi
  • NEST Overview talk by @abigailm

Fenix Webinar

• request by ICEI team (dissemination) to have a "Best Practices using NEST on Fenix-RI services"
• bit early, currently groups are waiting for allocations or are just starting to work on the allocations
• slide of best practice already in last Webinar

Ebrains Infrastructure Training (next week)

• @stinebuu NEST presentation

NEST on SimGRID

• SimGRID.org
• Building a virtual infrastructure to look into possible HPC architectures

AOB

• NEST Documentation workflow quick-survey