6th EasyBuild User Survey (2022)¶

Warning

This page currently presents the raw results of the 6th EasyBuild User Survey, which was held in March 2023.

Additional text will be added to help interpret the results soon.

The results of the EasyBuild User Survey are assumed to give a fairly representative view on the EasyBuild community, but they should be interpreted with a grain of salt, since there is no doubt significant bias in terms of participants.

Sampling bias cartoo

Survey participation¶

00. Survey participation over the years

Participation in the EasyBuild User Survey has been growing steadily over the years, to 118 participants in the 6th survey which was held March 2023.

01. Via which channel did you become aware of the 6th EasyBuild User Survey?

For the previous survey, the majority of the participants were made aware of it via the EasyBuild mailing list (~42%) and the EasyBuild Slack (~34%).

While these two channels were still the most prominent for this survey, it is now the EasyBuild Slack that is the largest trigger to participate in the survey: ~47% (vs 27% via the EasyBuild mailing list).

Demographics¶

03. What type of organisation do you work for?

04. In which part of the world are you located?

EasyBuild: adoption and experience¶

05. How long have you been using EasyBuild?

06. How did you first learn about EasyBuild?

07. What is the main aspect of EasyBuild that convinced you to start using it?

Operating system¶

08. On which operating system(s) do you use EasyBuild?

Python version¶

09. Which Python version do you usually use to run EasyBuild?

10. How troublesome would it be for you if EasyBuild becomes incompatible with Python 2.7?

System aspects¶

CPUs¶

11. What's the aggregate core count for the HPC systems you manage, support, or use?

12. Are you installing software optimized for different CPU types?

13. For which CPU types are you installing software using EasyBuild? (Intel only)

13. For which CPU types are you installing software using EasyBuild? (AMD only)

13. For which CPU types are you installing software using EasyBuild? (non Intel/AMD)

GPUs¶

14. What's the aggregate GPU count for the HPC systems you manage, support, or use?

15. Are you installing software optimized for different GPU types?

16. For which accelerators are you installing software using EasyBuild? (NVIDIA Tesla only)

Top500¶

17. Are you using EasyBuild on a system that's in the current Top500 list (Nov'22)?

EasyBuild version¶

18. Which EasyBuild version do you mainly use?

19. If you're not using the latest release, why not?

Toolchains¶

20. Which (full) toolchain(s) do you use? (only foss)

Significant increase in use of NVHPC-based toolchains (21%, was 15% and 7% in previous surveys).

21. How frequently should the 'foss' and 'intel' common toolchains be updated?

Installations¶

22. How many software installations did you perform in the last year using EasyBuild? 23. How many software installations/modules installed with EasyBuild do you currently have in production (in total, across different systems)?

24. Is EasyBuild your only way of installing (scientific) software?

25. Do you still install (scientific) software manually?

26. Are end users using EasyBuild to install software in their own accounts, or are you doing so yourself?

Customizations¶

27. Which easyconfig files do you use?

28. Do you use any custom easyblocks not included in the central EasyBuild repository?

29. Have you made any site-specific customisations to EasyBuild?

Community¶

30. Do you actively contribute back to EasyBuild?

31. Are you subscribed to the EasyBuild mailing list?

32. Do you use the EasyBuild Slack channel?

33. Are you planning to attend the next EasyBuild User Meeting?

Logo¶

Documentation¶

35. How do you like the revamp of the EasyBuild documentation?

36. How complete is the EasyBuild documentation according to you?

37. How often do you consult the EasyBuild documentation?

38. How useful is the EasyBuild documentation to you?

Tutorial¶

39. Are you aware of the EasyBuild tutorial?

40. Have you worked through the EasyBuild tutorial?

Other tools & projects¶

41. Do you use any other tools/projects in combination with EasyBuild? (only modules tool)

48. Have you heard about the EESSI project?

Modules¶

43. How long are modules installed with EasyBuild available to users?

44. Which module naming scheme do you use?

EasyBuild aspects¶

42. What are your favourite EasyBuild features?

46. Which parts of EasyBuild do you not like? (evolution since 2017)

45. How do you like the frequency of EasyBuild releases?

47. If a commercial support option would be available, would you consider purchasing it?

49. How would you rate the overall quality of EasyBuild?