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EasyBuild

License information

EasyBuild is made available under the GNU General Public License version 2.

User documentation

What is EasyBuild?

EasyBuild is a software build and installation framework written in Python that allows you to install software in a structured, repeatable and robust way.

There is a web-based manual for EasyBuild. Tutorials are also available on the web, including a tutorial specifically for LUMI in our training archive web site.

Using EasyBuild on LUMI

Loading the EasyBuild module only gives you a standard configuration of EasyBuild that will install in your already space-limited home directory, not recognise the already installed software in the LUMI software stack, and in fact use build recipes that are not all compatible with LUMI.

To install software building upon the centrally installed LUMI software stacks (as provided by the LUMI/xx.yy modules), users should load the EasyBuild-user module instead as discussed in the EasyBuild section of the main LUMI documentation.

Pre-installed modules (and EasyConfigs)

To access module help and find out for which stacks and partitions the module is installed, use module spider EasyBuild/<version>.

EasyConfig:

Technical documentation

EasyBuild

Version 4.4.2 for LUMI/21.08

  • Started from the default EasyConfig but added additional help information to the module file.

Version 4.5.3 for LUMI/21.12

  • We activated the new feature to show a progress bar and also added support for archspec. This is done by adding additional packages via extensions in the EasyConfig. It is a very fragile combination though, only very specific combinations of version worked.

Version 4.6.0 for LUMI/22.06 and LUMI/22.08

  • The additional packages that are used to activate archspec in EasyBuild and to provide the progress bar are a very fragile mix. Updating any of them to newer versions didn't work, maybe due to the lack of pip and the very old version of python as the system Python.

Version 4.7.1 for LUMI/22.12 and LUMI/23.03

  • Trivial port of the 4.6.0 EasyConfig.

Version 4.8.2 for LUMI/23.09

  • Trivial port of the 4.7.1 EasyConfig.

  • In a later update we added support for loading EasyBuild-tools if available.

Version 4.9.2 for LUMI/23.12 and 24.03

  • Started as a trivial port of the 4.8.2 EasyConfig

  • At first removed support for loading EasyBuild-tools as the reason for it is
    no longer there (MATLAB installation done differently).

  • Added PyYAML to the list of extra Python packages as we also wanted to use EasyBuild with EasyStack files in a container that did not have PyYAMSL in its system Python installation.

    The problem with this package is that it installs its egg in lib64 instead of in lib so that two directories need to be added to PYTHONPATH.

  • Needed to modify libsci.py in toolchains/linalg in the framework as it should now check CRAY_PE_LIBSCI_PREFIX_DIR instead of CRAY_LIBSCI_PREFIX_DIR. For now we check for both so that the same EasyConfig can also be used to install EasyBuild for older versions of the Cray PE.

  • Wanted to use postinstallcmds to robustify a number of scripts, but that was
    not supported by the EasyBlock so that one needed to be changed also.

    • Robustify the eb command:

      • PYTHONPATH is hard-coded in the eb shell script and overwrites anything from the environment.

      • In the loop that searches for a suitable Python command, we added the system Python with full path and version at the front of the list. Hence strictly speaking EB_PYTHON is no longer needed.

    • Robustifying the archspec, cmark and puygmentize scripts put in the bin directory when installing their respective additional packages:

      • Shebang line changed to explicitly call python3.6, and added the -E option to avoid using the value of PYTHONPATH

      • We then used sys.path.append to add the lib subdirectory to the Python search path. The lib64 subdirectory was not added as PyYAML is not needed by those commands.

  • And added sanity checks that explicitly unset PYTHONPATH to verify that these commands indeed work without PYTHONPATH.

  • The module however still sets PYTHONPATH as (1) this is difficult to turn off, it is one of those variables generated automatically by EasyBuild if it finds a certain directory, and (2) it is still needed when using EasyBuild as a library.

Archived EasyConfigs

The EasyConfigs below are additional easyconfigs that are not directly available on the system for installation. Users are advised to use the newer ones and these archived ones are unsupported. They are still provided as a source of information should you need this, e.g., to understand the configuration that was used for earlier work on the system.