GraphLab versions (or lack thereof)

[Jeff Shafer]

GraphLab, since moving code distribution over to GitHub, appears to use a development cycle of "continuous improvement."  By which I mean, the exact version of GraphLab you get depends on the specific day/time you do a "git pull" on the repository.   As a developer, I love this.  As a user, it terrifies me.

Can we get an official determination from the committee that a GraphLab checkout of a specific commit ID is guaranteed to be able to run all the competition datasets?    While we hope that all commits represent useful improvements, there's no guarantee that will be the case... Last minute API changes to GraphLab could result in competition datasets being broken.

Thanks,

Jeff

[Verónica Vergara Larrea (SCC13 Science Lead)]

Hi Jeff,

That does sound terrifying! 
For the competition we recommend you use stable releases, the latest being GraphLab v2.2: https://github.com/graphlab-code/graphlab/releases 

Warning! Use at your own risk: That said, you are definitely allowed to use more recent development versions and even modify the code to tune it for your system, see [1]. But remember, if you use a version other than the stable release the judge will use, it is *your responsibility* to verify that it produces the same results.

Best,
Verónica

[1] https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/student-cluster-competition13/81xnrTIigLo

[Jeff Shafer]

Sounds good Veronica, thank you.  I had missed the .tar.gz download link at GitHub previously. (You can also see the commit ID it is associated with, in case anyone wants to try merging/backporting future changes to the stable code).

Jeff

[Verónica Vergara Larrea (SCC13 Science Lead)]

Hi Jeff,

A quick update for you, the Application Specialist for GraphLab will be using a slightly newer version for SCC. The corresponding commitID is 734e9b6f9b (full commitID: 734e9b6f9b93ebcbb88348671ede5bac25e7a353).

Best,

Verónica