Installing Modules on Windows
This document is an overview of building and installing Modules on a Windows platform.
Requirements
Modules consists of one Tcl script so to run it from a user shell the only
requirement is to have a working version of tclsh
(version 8.5 or later)
available on your system. tclsh
is a part of Tcl.
A specific distribution zipball is provided to install Modules on a Windows platform. Content of this distribution zipball is ready for use and does not require a specific build step. All scripts and documentation found in this zipball are pre-built so there is no specific tools are required to install Modules from the Windows-specific distribution zipball.
Installation instructions
Install a Tcl binary distribution for Windows like ActiveTcl or Magicsplat Tcl/Tk for Windows. Follow instructions provided with the chosen distribution to install it.
Once installed, verify that the
tclsh
command is correctly found in definedPATH
by typing the following command from a Windowscmd
shell (windows
string should be obtained as result):> echo puts $tcl_platform(platform) | tclsh windows
Download Modules specific distribution zipball for Windows from SourceForge or GitHub. Such distribution archives are available for Modules release starting version
4.5.0
and can be distinguished from the source tarball by the-win
suffix in their name.
Unpack downloaded zip file then enter deflated directory and execute the
INSTALL.bat
script file found in it. This script installs files by default inC:\Program Files\Environment Modules\
directory and adds thebin
directory in this installation location to the system-widePATH
environment variable.If you use Powershell Core on Windows, please use the
INSTALL_PWSH.bat
instead. It won't add thebin
directory to the system-widePATH
environment variable because themodule
command will interfere with Powershell'smodule
keyword.
Note
INSTALL.bat
and INSTALL_PWSH.bat
scripts may require to be
run with administrator rights to perform installation correctly.
Once installed, verify that the
module
command is correctly found. If you used theINSTALL.bat
script, the commands should be in the definedPATH
. Verify by typing the following command from a Windowscmd
shell:> module -V Modules Release 5.5.0 (2024-11-11)
If your used the
INSTALL_PWSH.bat
script, the environment has to be initialized first. Verify by typing the following commands from a Windowscmd
shell:> call "C:\Program Files\Environment Modules\init\cmd.cmd" > module -V Modules Release 5.5.0 (2024-11-11)
And the following commands from a Windows
pwsh
shell:> . "C:\Program Files\Environment Modules\init\pwsh.ps1" > envmodule --version Modules Release 5.5.0 (2024-11-11)
Installation location can be adapted by running the INSTALL.bat
and
INSTALL_PWSH.bat
scripts from a cmd
console shell and passing desired
installation target as argument. For instance to install Modules in
C:\EnvironmentModules
directory:
> INSTALL.bat C:\EnvironmentModules
For PowerShell, you may adapt profile script to make envmodule
command
initialized when pwsh
shell starts. See the PowerShell documentation on
how to customize your shell environment.
Modules installation is now operational and you can setup your modulefiles. By
default, the modulefiles
directory in installation directory is defined as
a modulepath and contains few modulefile examples:
> module avail
------- C:/Program Files/Environment Modules/modulefiles --------
module-git module-info null
Documentation of the module and ml commands and
modulefile syntax can be found in the doc
directory in
installation directory.