Software layer
Is hosting scientific software installations that were built for different processor architectures, where EasyBuild, Lmod and archspec are leveraged
EasyBuild is a software build and installation framework that manages (scientific) software in an efficient way, without compromises on performance. Easybuild is especially tailored towards High Performance Computing (HPC) environments.
EasyBuild intends to relieve HPC support teams from manually managing software installations while at the same time providing a consistent and well performing scientific software stack to end users of HPC systems.
It serves as a uniform interface for installing scientific software and saves valuable time (and frustration) by the automation of tedious, boring and repetitive tasks. In addition, EasyBuild can empower scientific researchers to self-manage their software stack, and it can serve as a tool that can be leveraged for building optimized container images.
Lmod is a Lua-based module system that easily handles the MODULEPATH Hierarchical problem. Environment Modules provide a convenient way to dynamically change the users’ environment through modulefiles. This includes easily adding or removing directories to the PATH environment variable.
Lmod provides a convenient way to dynamically change a user’s environment through modulefiles. This includes easily adding or removing directories to the PATH environment variable.
A modulefile contains the necessary information to allow a user to run a particular application or provide access to a particular library. All of this can be done dynamically without logging out and back in. Modulefiles for applications modify the user’s path to make access easy. Modulefiles for Library packages provide environment variables that specify where the library and header files can be found. It is also very easy to switch between different versions of a package or remove the package.
Packages can be loaded and unloaded cleanly through the module system. All the popular shells are supported: bash, ksh, csh, tcsh, zsh. Lmod is also available for perl and python.
Archspec (Python bindings) – Archspec aims at providing a standard set of human-understandable labels for various aspects of a system architecture like CPU, network fabrics, etc. and APIs to detect, query and compare them.
This project grew out of Spack and is currently under active development. At present it supports APIs to detect and model compatibility relationships among different CPU microarchitectures.
Detailed information about how we configure Software Layer is available at https://github.com/EESSI/software-layer