Release notes¶

This file describes changes in recent versions of Modules. It primarily documents those changes that are of interest to users and admins.

Modules 4.0.0 (2017-10-16)¶

Starting with this release, modules-tcl has become Modules. The following changes describe the differences with last modules-tcl release (1.923). To learn about the changes between this release and last Modules 3.2 release, please see the Migrating from v3.2 to v4.0 document.

Relax constraint on command-line argument position so options and switches can be passed either before or after command name.
Report unsupported option warning rather stop on error when compatibility-version specific command-line switches are passed ( --force, --human, --verbose, --silent, --create, --icase, --userlvl).
Keep empty module load line in shell configuration files after running the initrm or initclear commands.
Always return the value of tcl_platform(osVersion) for uname release
Optimize code output, for Perl to only return 1; once for a no-operation situation and for Python to not import os when there is only an error to render.
Use value of system command uname -n for uname nodename.
Add support for CMake shell
Ignore / character used as suffix in modulefile name passed on command line.
Rename Perl initialization script in perl.pm and Python in python.py.
Add support for Ruby shell (with contribution from Tammo Tjarks)
Add support for R shell (with contribution from Roy Storey)
When a default is set for a given module name, target modulefile can be referred on as modulename/default in addition to just modulename.
Locate symbolic versions on avail command even these symbols are set over a module alias or another symbolic version. In this situation the symbol spread along the resolution path until reaching a modulefile.
Define a more standard shebang on modulecmd.tcl script.
Determine modulefile corresponding to given module name using the loaded context only on unload situation.
Enable to unload mod/dir/subdir/vers when unload of mod or mod/dir asked. Was previously working only if deep module to unload was also the default version for these root names.
Make -l/-t switches mutually exclusive. Last switch mentioned on the command-line is honored.
Output parsable modulepath header when -l/-t switches are enabled.
When searching for a module in a given modulepath directory, if a module alias or a symbolic version matches searched module but the target of this alias or symbol is not found in current modulepath directory, search for this target restarting search from the first modulepath in list to ensure modulepath priority.
Solve aliases or symbolic versions looking for all modulepaths on search and paths commands. Was previously solved if their target was found in same modulepath directory.
Add support for hidden dot modulefiles. A hidden modulefile does not appear in case of wild search, it is only returned when search is about its exact name.
No table header print in –long mode on an avail command if no result are returned.
Add blank line between displayed list of elements, for instance between modulepath content on avail command.
Improve readability of error messages encountered during modulefile execution by putting Tcl error message first after the Module ERROR prefix.
Do not exit immediately when an internal error occurs in currently interpreted modulefile. Consider this interpretation as failed and continue to proceed the other modulefile arguments.
When multiple modulefiles are passed on display, help and test commands only output one separator line between 2 interpreted modulefiles.
Fix environment settings stack handling issue when restoring stack after a failed attempt to load a modulefile in a modulefile.
Failed attempt to load or unload a modulefile within a modulefile now leads to this upper modulefile load or unload failure. Previously upper modulefile were loaded respectively unloaded even if its dependent sub-modulefile failed to load or unload.
During a switch command, if the unloading part fails the loading part will not be tried. Unloading part fails if module to unload does not exist or its unload interpretation raise error.
Init: use module source rather shell command source to load modulerc system configuration in sh-kind, csh-kind and fish shell init scripts.
Install: transform configuration options to bind to an existing compatibility Modules version into option (–enable-compat-version) to build and install this compatibility version along with main version.
Init: adapt initialization scripts to handle both main and compatibility version. By default a shell script enables main version and if the environment variable MODULES_USE_COMPAT_VERSION is set to 1, the compatibility version is enabled instead of main version.
Install: import from compatibility version and install add.modules and mkroot utility scripts (scripts developed by R.K. Owen).
Install: update RPM spec file to handle compatibility version as a compat sub-package.
Add completion script for Fish shell (contribution from BEFH).
Doc: extend content of diff_v3_v4 to details all noticeable changes between v3.2 and v4.0.
Doc: introduce MIGRATING guide to learn the major changes when moving from v3.2 to v4.0.
Fix list command when full pathname modulefile is loaded (fix bug#132)
Install: handle version number though git tags in scripts, documentation and RPM spec file.
Doc: migrate documents from POD format to reStructuredText to benefit from Sphinx documentation framework and Read The Docs publishing capabilities.

Above changes describe the differences with modules-tcl release 1.923. To learn about the changes between Modules 4.0 and last Modules 3.2 release, please see the Migrating from v3.2 to v4.0 document.

modules-tcl-1.923 (2017-07-20)¶

Fix aliases command when a global or user RC file is set.
Find and solve global or user RC aliases and symbolic versions on search, whatis and paths commands.
Do not look at currently loaded modules to resolve the target of a module alias.
Rework default and latest versions search on avail command. Correct display when at a given level a sub-directory element is last element in directory among modulefiles. Previously sub-directory was printed but last file among modulefiles was also printed (2 latest versions at the same level). A directory tagged “default” does not appear anymore in default listing result as its content (the default version found in that directory) will be displayed.
When an alias is set and overrides name of an existing directory, take this alias into account for default and latest choice and ignore directory content.
Bad default set will lead to no result displayed for the corresponding module in case of default avail display.
Correct inclusion of aliases in output result when these aliases are not part of the exact same module path than module path of the search.
Rewrite existing shell initialization file with initadd, initprepend, initswitch, initrm and initclear commands rather than writing a new file then copying this new file to replace the existing initialization file. In addition only re-writes shell initialization file if its content need to be altered.
Raise an error on initadd, initprepend, initswitch, initrm and initclear commands when no module load line are found in shell initialization file.
Normalize error messages for the various collection-related commands when collection cannot be accessed.
Cleanup existing reference counters of a path list variable when this variable is altered by a setenv or an unsetenv command.
Init: do not pollute tab-completion with moduleraw command. (Bert Wesarg)
Make use of the same Tcl interp for each modulefile interpretation and use another one for each modulerc (but the same for each modulerc). By doing so we proceed like on C-version where same interpreter is used across modulefile or modulerc interpretation. Huge performance improvement is achieved with this change on commands making intensive use of interp like avail. Interpreter state is reset from one interpretation to another: the initial variable and procedure state is restored before each new interpretation to avoid spread of definitions from one interpretation to another. Also in case of nested interpretation each interpretation level has its own interpreter so a module loaded by another does not influence the interpretation of the module loading it.
Improve performance of aliases and symbolic versions resolution by computing these resolution at definition time. As a consequence resolution loop are not registered anymore and produce an error message when spotted not at display time.
Reduce number of access system call by trying access to modulefile when reading the content of a modulefile directory rather testing access before trying it.
No error raise on empty argument list for load. To cope with initadd behavior that requires at least an empty module load line in startup files. (fix SF bug#88)
Fix initadd to handle load line without trailing space. Was previously expecting load directive to be written “module load ” to get a match. With fix, module load line will also be matched.
Like C-version catch raised error when break or continue are called from outside of a loop to handle them as when they are called from modulefile main body. (fix SF bug#87)
Return error on module use command when an empty path string is provided rather ignoring it.
Workaround min and max functions and lreverse procedure for correct operations under Tcl version 8.4.
Install: add –with-tclsh configure option to give the ability to choose the Tcl interpreter shell to setup in initialization scripts.
Handle error raised from the ModulesDisplay, ModulesHelp and ModulesTest procedures in the same way than for the evaluation of the modulefile content. An error occurring during the evaluation of the modulefile content will lead to no evaluation of the display, help and test command specific functions.
Remove debug module command
Doc: describe path, paths and autoinit module command.
Correct use of xrdb tool when not installed in default path.
Fix init* module commands to behave more like C-version and document remaining differences in diff_with_c-version.
Init: make sh init script closer to POSIX specification to support sh flavors different than Bash or Zsh like Dash.
Fix column-mode display for very short width terminal.
Install: introduce an install non-regression testsuite which is triggered by the make testinstall command and checks modules-tcl installation is operational.
Init: fix modulerc load test on fish init script.
Init: fix interactive shell test on sh init script.
Install: add –enable-example-modulefiles configure option that install by default some modulefiles provided as example in the system modulefiles directory.
Install: when uninstalling, do not remove modulefiles directory if it is not empty.
Add completion script for Zsh shell.
Add module test command to trigger when called execution of a ModulesTest procedure in target modulefile following same kind of mechanism than module help.

modules-tcl-1.832 (2017-04-29)¶

Fix getenv sub-command to correctly return environment variable value.
Clarify in man-pages display of module alias and symbolic version-name on avail command and management of file access issue when locating modulefiles.
Distinguish access issue (permission denied) from find issue (cannot locate) when trying to access directly a directory or a modulefile as done on load, display or whatis commands. In addition on this kind of access, not readable .modulerc files are ignored rather producing a missing magic cookie error.
When mode is set to unload, module load commands in modulefile are interpreted as module unload commands. To guaranty correct behavior regarding requirements, the module list passed to the load command is reversed to unload the modulefiles in the reverse order than they have been loaded.
Correct display command to only report module commands set in modulefile and not those set in the various .modulerc on the path toward this modulefile.
Fix bash and tcsh completion scripts to eliminate symbolic version names from avail command result.
Improve avail command when a symbolic version-name is passed as argument to return the modulefile target of this symbolic version-name.
When looking for an implicit default in a directory, now a module alias is taken into account so it can be returned as the last element in it (highest numerically sorted version).
Fix list command to correctly display the default tag along loaded modules when set via a .version file.
Fix long output of list command to display the symbolic version-names associated to each loaded module if any.
Improve avail command to return alias module when an alias name is passed as argument.
On a --default listing, a modulefile does not appear anymore if a directory is set default at the same level. On a --latest listing, a directory does not appear anymore if set default but not the latest.
Read modulerc and validate its header in a single open/read/close sequence instead of two in order to reduce to number of IO operations during an avail command.
Drastically reduce grid size computation time which removes overhead when displaying module avail results in column-mode.
Translate module name to currently interpreted module name when name correspond to the last part this interpreted module only in case of symbolic version-name or alias resolution.
Avoid resetting regular path (/usr/bin) or manpath (/usr/share/man) when switching from Tcl to C version in switchml utility.
Raise error on x-resource if DISPLAY environment variable is not set.
Fix lisp init script which was broken for environment change actions.

modules-tcl-1.775 (2017-03-07)¶

Improve README with examples, requirements, links, etc. Also update INSTALL documentation with details on the new configure/make/make install process.
Add display of a release date next to the version number when calling for --help or --version.
Update diff_with_c-version document to describe the features of the Tcl-version that are not supported on the C-version. Also state that the diff takes C version 3.2.10 against Tcl version 1.729 as a basis.
Introduce switchml tool, a shell function (or alias for csh or tcsh shells) that swap currently enabled Modules version (C or Tcl) by the other version (C or Tcl). Configure option --with-cver-initdir must be defined to enable switchml in initialization script.
Define a PATH and MANPATH in shell initialization scripts that point to the defined modules-tcl installation directories.
Give ability to generate distribution tarball from the git repository with Makefile dist target.
Introduce an installation process for this software following the configure/make/make install fashion. Configure step enables to choose installation paths and init scripts features to activate. Make step mainly translates init scripts with the configuration set. Make install creates target directories and copy files into them.
Fix MODULESHOME setup in autoinit command to define it as an absolute path and set it to the upper directory when modulecmd.tcl is located in a bin or a libexec directory.
Correct alias and version resolution on avail command which was erroneous in case of a modulefile holding symbols (like default) and targeted by aliases. Avail output was showing the aliases holding the symbols instead of the modulefile.

modules-tcl-1.729 (2017-02-01)¶

Add documentation in module(1) man page on the modulefile collection concept and the relative save, restore, saverm, saveshow and savelist commands.
Add document to list the differences of the functionalities that can be found on the C-version of the Modules package compared to the Tcl-version.
Improve modulecmd.tcl shebang to only search tclsh once if found in PATH.
Add module-info mode check against remove and switch values.
Introduce module-info command Modules-specific Tcl command to distinguish complex load or unload commands that cannot be determined with module-info mode alone. For instance a modulefile can now be aware that a switch, a restore or a purge command is currently being run.
Enable usage of module-info Modules-specific Tcl command from a modulerc file.
Fix module-info specified Modules-specific Tcl command.
No exit raise on modulefile or modulerc error during avail, aliases, whatis and search commands to avoid harming results from these global commands if error exists in a few modulefiles.
Exit with error code when a critical error is encountered when interpreting a modulefile or a modulerc.
Inhibit non-critical error report raised from modulefiles during avail, aliases, whatis and search commands to avoid error flood when parsing all modulefiles or modulercs.
Handle multiple lines of module-whatis Modules-specific Tcl commands defined for the same modulefile.
Handle multiple arguments passed to the module-whatis Modules-specific Tcl commands. They are joined to get a single line of text.
Return error on whatis command if searched modulefile is not found.

modules-tcl-1.704 (2017-01-20)¶

Set path variable counter to 1 for paths without a known reference count (was previously set to 999999999).
Introduce envml utility which acts as an application launcher where module commands are instantiated to setup environment before launching the given application.
Always register paths provided to be part of MODULEPATH environment variable as absolute paths to get independent from the current working directory.
Inhibit next modulefiles interpretation with exit Modules-specific Tcl command only if current mode is load.
Add argument to module-info shell and module-info shelltype to test current shell or shelltype value.
Fix use of default version-name to not consider it as a module symbol if a modulefile is named default.
Fix path variable counters when : character is used in elements of a path-like variable.
Update module(1) and modulefile(4) man pages to clear content specific to the C version of Modules and add content specific to or adapt content that behave differently on this Tcl version.
Fix TCLSH variable issue in Python init script.

modules-tcl-1.677 (2017-01-04)¶

Make switch command handle a single argument. The modulefile to switch to is the one passed on the command-line and the modulefile to unload is assumed to be the currently loaded module with the same root name as this modulefile specified on the command-line.
Make switch command idempotent by always ending up with old unloaded and new loaded, whatever the starting situation is.
Fix exit Modules-specific Tcl command.
Add refresh command as alias on reload command.
Add dummy module-log, module-trace, module-user and module-verbosity Modules-specific Tcl commands to enable support for modulefiles using them.
Fix system Modules-specific Tcl command to behave like described on the man page.
Fix module list when module loaded with full path
Disable g_force property by default to avoid loading a modulefile already loaded. It also avoids path element reference counting to get increased when the same module is asked twice for load.
Clarify module-info mode option and set help mode on module help command.
Clarify module-info flags and user options.
Handle empty or separator path on add-path ad unload-path commands.
Delete environment variable targeted by an unsetenv command on unload mode if no value has been provided along. On display mode, print environment variable value if any has been passed to unsetenv command.
When setting Tcl variable, enclose value within double quotes.
Fix perl quoting style for variable set, escape single quotes rather double quotes.
Call unuse command instead of use command on a module unload.
Fix continue Modules-specific Tcl command.
Add chdir Modules-specific Tcl command.
Fix break Modules-specific Tcl command.

modules-tcl-1.655 (2016-11-23)¶

No display of modulepath header if no module found in it.
Remove call to module aliases on module avail command, as aliases are now directly included in the avail results.
Include module aliases in the displayed result of an avail command. Also display aliases defined in a global or user modulerc file.
Exit with error code if error occurred on display or help commands.
Fix module-info symbols resolution.
Better handling of .modulerc and .version files when searching for a modulefile.
Fix module-info version resolution.
Fix module-info alias resolution.
Register alias and version by the short module name and improve their resolution to avoid loop.
Source $MODULERCFILE/modulerc when $MODULERCFILE is dir.
Make it so you can do module avail un, wildcard * character implied.

modules-tcl-1.632 (2016-09-06)¶

Raise error if command does not receive the excepted number of arguments.
Improve column-mode display to get a denser output on avail command.
Standardize the output of Warning, Error, InternalBug and ErrorAndExit messages.
Add short option -d for –delim on prepend-path.
Introduce collection target concept to distinguish between machines, environments or domains that are incompatible with each other.
Introduce saveshow command, to display content of saved collections.
Improve save and restore commands to handle collection specified as absolute or relative file path.
Introduce saverm command, to delete saved collections.
Enable to restore collection with multiple modulefiles specified on the same line.
Fix restore command when there is no module to load in collection.
Fix restore command when collection fully rewind module paths.
Fix restore command to preserve module path order set in collection.
Raise error if try to save an empty environment in a collection.

modules-tcl-1.602 (2016-08-13)¶

Add support for Fish shell.
Import recent tests added to C-version on 10-use and 50-cmds testsuites.
Add short option -d for –delim on append-path and remove-path.
Fix load and implement unload x-resource.
Fix Python code that was broken or not Python3-compliant. Fixed code is used to define the module command, to render error and to process x-resource.
Always dictionary-sort (also called numerical-sort) list of modulefiles or list of collections.
Fix bash completion script to be compliant with bash posix mode.

modules-tcl-1.578 (2014-12-24)¶

First release to be described in this NEWS file but it does not mean this is the first version of modules-tcl as this Modules flavor is born in 2002.
At this stage, modules-tcl handles a majority of the module commands and modulefile Tcl commands available on C version.