DIALS core meeting 2026-05-07

Previous Actions

• ND Investigate getting psana tests running on the DIALS xfel-regression testing
• ND: Move dials.diamond.ac.uk to a redirect to dials.github.io
  • Caveat: Sub-path links either work or not, do not get redirected
  • Now have an idea who owns this, chasing it down

Agenda

Other CI Issues

• Installers failing on our internal CI machines. Down to launch logic in https://github.com/dials/dials/blob/e91f5f66368ec546b160ccfd2fbd30b2926a65de/installer/create_installer.py#L36-L52 that prefers python2.7 if available - looks like conda-pack switched to requiring python 3.
• Probably easiest way for now is to just use python/python3 and remove the fallbacks.
• DIALS release 3.28 been asked for - hopefully will solve other background issues
• ND to look at getting release out tomorrow
• 3.28 out, DGW reports some windows issues

Metrics

• 2025-09-25 - dxtbx-side merged in, nothing yet in DIALS side to push it into the mtz history https://github.com/cctbx/dxtbx/pull/816
• Needs to be work to put in on DIALS side
• Work to do:
  • Need to package history into MTZ, but MTZ history not the right place. Decided MTZ-appendix is the right place to put this in, but work not started yet
  • Aaron has offered Yang’s skills as his work should cover this area
  • Write integrate and scale history to MTZ #2924
  • David to dig relevant information out
• MTZ Appendix: Some controversy
  • Phenix/DIALS not included in discussions
  • Fundamental technological issues
    • Mixing MTZ/CIF
• Gemmi supports
• AB met with BP/DGW/Oleg/Dorothy and talking about MTZ appendix issue
  • Conclusion: Nobody completely happy, AB to approach Clemens and get conversation going
• Dan Paley found issue with profiling and MTZ appendix https://github.com/cctbx/dxtbx/pull/867
  • Agreed looks reasonable
  • Requested David to have a look
  • All agreed, merge after newsfragment
  • Merged!
• AB: To make meeting with Clemens to try to find agreement that we probably need to just go with this
  • Have reached out over email

Hamburg Work

• Hamburg: imageset, sequences, laziness so it works on 100,000 image HDF5 files
• Did some work in a branch to get stills_process to use imagesequences
• Nick did some work to eliminate need for check_format
• All of this is in branches that have not been revisited
• Discussion about still goniometer dogma
• Defer work until IUCR

Shoebox object size

• DW raises performance issues, particularly with dials.integrate
  • Found issues The Shoebox struct is overweight
  • WIP: https://github.com/dials/dials/pull/3119
  • Dan working on getting tests run
  • This was merged!

dials.index with max_lattices >= 2: rejection criteria

• https://github.com/dials/dials/issues/3110 dials.index with max_lattices >= 2: rejection criteria.
  • We think related to known symmetry
  • Wait until Graeme here
• Long discussion about integration memory usage and sample datasets.
• Graeme is here!
• Graeme is going to make efforts to come up with a plan for fixing this
• Interesting discussion about handling of multilattice data

AOB

Next meeting

Thursday, May 21st, 4pm (BST), 8am (PDT), 10am (CDT)