DIALS core meeting 2026-06-18

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

Mac Installer

Matt Mcleod notes that the Mac launcher button for 3.28.0 doesn’t work.  https://dials.github.io/installation.html. It seems filenames have changed on https://dials.diamond.ac.uk/diamond_builds/

• Proposed solution: Wait until conda-forge has releases and build conda-constructor packages for platforms other than linux
• People seem generally happy with this

News from Phenix

• Now on Python 3.11 so can have more recent version of DIALS

ImageSequence rewrite PR

• Discussion on https://github.com/dials/dials/issues/2377 using ImageSequence in dials.stills_process. Now looking at a scan properties solution. Benchmarking. How long does dials.image_viewer take to open with FormatXTC?
• PR: https://github.com/dials/dials/pull/3181
• General discussion on how to deal with AI generated code changes. Break sweeping Claude changes into small easily reviewed and understood components.

DIALS Repo PR Notes

• DIALS PR list is not showing many PR. (Header shows 25, 15 in list)
• Nick has filed a ticket, somewhat known issue with stale indexing caches
• Ticket addressed while in this meeting!

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.
• 3.29 out, DGW reports some windows issues
• ND to address

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
• Probably a good idea to discuss this with everyone in person in Calgary
• DW feels just missing the MTZ appendix output, feels we are going to have to use it eventually

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
• Graeme is not here today, defer until he is

AOB

Niggli cell rewrite message incompatibility

• Xia2 error: https://github.com/xia2/xia2/issues/925
• https://github.com/cctbx/cctbx_project/pull/1184

We should promote xia2 more

• Reports from workshops that people like autoproc “because it is only one thing to run and not many steps”
• We should promote that xia2 is an option that does this!

Next meeting

Thursday, July 2nd, 4pm (BST), 8am (PDT), 10am (CDT)