Weekly Update: September 18, 2019
IN THIS MESSAGE
- Center Announcements
- Apply Now for the 2020 BSSw Fellowship
- Python 2 End of Life; Transition to Python 3
- Upcoming Scheduled Outages
- All OLCF systems (Sep 24)
CENTER ANNOUNCEMENTS
APPLY NOW FOR THE 2020 BSSw FELLOWSHIP
The Better Scientific Software (BSSw) Fellowship program fosters and promotes practices, processes and tools to improve developer productivity and software sustainability of scientific codes.
Each 2020 BSSw Fellow will receive up to $25,000 for an activity that promotes better scientific software. We encourage diverse applicants at all career stages, ranging from students through early-career, mid-career, and senior professionals.
Applications for the 2020 Fellowships will be accepted through Tuesday, 15 October 2019. This is a firm deadline that will not be extended. Details of the program can be found here, including an FAQ list and information on prior Fellows.
Those interested in applying are encouraged to participate in an informational fellowship webinar and Q&A session, scheduled for 1-2pm EDT on Friday, 20 September 2019. Please subscribe to our mailing list for teleconference details and other updates on the program. Note that the Fellowship is open to researchers with US institutional affiliations.
PYTHON 2 END OF LIFE; TRANSITION TO PYTHON 3
On January 1, 2020, Python 2 will reach its end of life and will no longer be supported by the project’s core developers. On this date, the OLCF will also end its support for Python 2. Users reliant on Python 2 should port code to Python 3 for forward compatibility with OLCF systems and many open source packages. Python 2 modules will not be removed on January 1, but will no longer receive maintenance or regular updates.
While default Python modules on OLCF systems are already set to Python 3, we recommend all users follow PEP394 by explicitly invoking either ‘python2’ or ‘python3’ instead of simply ‘python’. Python 2 Conda Environments, as well as user installations of Python 2 will remain as options for using Python 2 on OLCF systems.
Official documentation for porting from Python 2 to Python3 can be found at https://docs.python.org/3/howto/pyporting.html.
General information and a list of open source packages dropping support for Python 2 can be found at https://python3statement.org/.
UPCOMING SCHEDULED OUTAGES
All OLCF systems will be unavailable from 8:00 AM until 8:00 PM on Tuesday, September 24.