lms

lite module system. do you want different versions of libraries or programs? install them to a custom prefix, and create a module file for it. start using it with

$ moule load <module name>

modules are not persistent, and will only be available in your current shell. if you want to make it persistent, add to your shell's rc file.

i've used (and mildly modified) James McLaughlin's json parser for C.

configuration

lms will by default install to /usr/local/bin. to set the modules path, either edit src/base.h, or set the LMS_MODULE_PATH environment variable.

$ LMS_MODULE_PATH=/your/path/here make

by default, the modules path is /etc/lms-modules.

installation

build lms with make;

$ make

install with

# make install

this will install the lms binary, along with a supporting script. you'll want to edit /etc/profile to source /usr/local/bin/lms_module_script, so that lms will work. if you call lms, then by default, nothing will happen (it will create the scipt that needs to be sourced, but nothing will source it)

usage

lms can be used to list available modules, load modules, and unload modules. nothing really happens, if i'm honest. some environment variables are exported (and are not persistent), in particular, the LD_LIBRARY_PATH, PATH, and C_INCLUDE_PATH variables. that's kind of it, really.

$ module list

will list available modules.

$ module which gfortran

this will list what modules provide the gfortran binary. note, which will search through each module to see which ones provide the binary requested. this is not a search of module names. to load that module, run

$ module load languages/gcc/4.9.1

then gfortran should work. note that the above and

$ module load gcc

are equivilent, provided there is no ambiguity in only specifying the latter. finally, unloading modules is achieved with

$ module unload gcc

module files

a module is simply a JSON string in a file ending with .json. this is an example for gcc 4.8.2:

{
  "name"      : "gcc",
  "version"   : "4.8.2",
  "category"  : "languages",
  "prefix"    : "/modules/gcc/4.8.2",
  "provides"  : [ "gcc", "c++", "cpp", "g++", "gfortran" ],
  "exports"   : 
  [
    { "platform_path" : "/bin" },
    { "platform_libs" : "/lib" },
    { "platform_libs" : "/lib64" },
    { "platform_incl" : "/include" },
    { "platform_docs" : "/share/man" },
  ]
}

platform_path, platform_libs, platform_incl and platform_man are platform specific exports. use these where possible, rather than setting LD_LIBRARY_PATH manually - this would not work on OS X.

some modules need custom exports. e.g, the python library, pyopencl, would be described by this.

{
  "name"      : "pyopencl",
  "version"   : "14.1",
  "category"  : "python",
  "prefix"    : "/modules/pyopencl/2014.1",
  "provides"  : [ "pyopencl" ],
  "exports"   :
  [
    { "PYTHONPATH" : "/lib/python2.7/site-packages" },
  ]
}

multiple modules in a module file is currently not supported.