Installing Modules on Unix¶
This document is an overview of building and installing Modules on a Unix system.
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
8.4 or later) available on your system. tclsh
is a part of Tcl
(http://www.tcl.tk/software/tcltk/).
To install Modules from a distribution tarball or a clone of the git repository, a build step is there to adapt the initialization scripts to your configuration and create the documentation files. This build step requires the tools to be found on your system:
- bash
- make
- sed
- runtest
When also installing the bundled compatibility version of Modules (enabled by default), these additional tools are needed:
- autoconf
- automake
- autopoint
- grep
- gcc
- tcl-devel >= 8.4
When installing from a distribution tarball, documentation is pre-built and does not require additional software. When installing from a clone of the git repository, document has to be built and the following tools are required:
- sphinx >= 1.0
Installation instructions¶
The simplest way to build and install Modules is:
$ ./configure
$ make
$ make install
Some explanation, step by step:
cd
to the directory containing the package’s source code. Your system must have the above requirements installed to properly build scripts, compatibility version of Modules if enabled, and documentation if build occurs from a clone of the git repository.- Type
./configure
to adapt the installation for your system. At this step you can choose the installation paths and the features you want to enable in the initialization scripts (see Build and installation options section below for a complete overview of the available options) - Type
make
to adapt scripts to the configuration, build compatibility version if enabled and build documentation if working from git repository. - Optionally, type
make test
to run the test suite. - Type
make install
to install modulecmd.tcl, initialization scripts, compatibility version if built and documentation. - Optionally, type
make testinstall
to run the installation test suite. - You can remove the built files from the source code directory by typing
make clean
. To also remove the files thatconfigure
created, typemake distclean
.
A default installation process like described above will install Modules
under /usr/local/Modules
. You can change this with the --prefix
option. By default, /usr/local/Modules/modulefiles
will be setup as
the default directory containing modulefiles. --modulefilesdir
option
enables to change this directory location. For example:
$ ./configure --prefix=/usr/share/Modules \
--modulefilesdir=/etc/modulefiles
See Build and installation options section to discover all ./configure
option available.
Note
GNU Make is excepted to be used for this build and installation
process. On non-Linux systems, the gmake
should be called instead of
make
.
Configuration¶
Once installed you should review and adapt the configuration to make it fit your needs. The following steps are provided for example. They are not necessarily mandatory as it depends of the kind of setup you want to achieve.
Tune the initialization scripts. Review of these scripts is highly encouraged as you may add or adapt specific stuff to get Modules initialized the way you want.
Enable Modules initialization at shell startup. An easy way to get module function defined and its associated configuration setup at shell startup is to make the initialization scripts part of the system-wide environment setup in
/etc/profile.d
. To do so, make a link in this directory to the profile scripts that can be found in your Modules installation init directory:$ ln -s PREFIX/init/profile.sh /etc/profile.d/modules.sh $ ln -s PREFIX/init/profile.csh /etc/profile.d/modules.csh
These profile scripts will automatically adapt to the kind of
sh
orcsh
shell you are running.Another approach may be to get the Modules initialization script sourced from the shell configuration startup file. For instance following line could be added to the end of the
~/.bashrc
file if running Bash shell:source PREFIX/init/bash
Beware that shells have multiple ways to initialize depending if they are a login shell or not and if they are launched in interactive mode or not.
Define module paths to enable by default. Edit
modulerc
configuration file or.modulespath
if you have chosen--enable-dotmodulespath
at configure time. Add there all the modulefile directories you want to activate by default at Modules initialization time.If you use
.modulespath
configuration file, add one line mentioning each modulefile directory:/path/to/regular/modulefiles /path/to/other/modulefiles
If you use
modulerc
configuration file, add one line mentioning each modulefile directory prefixed by themodule use
command:module use /path/to/regular/modulefiles module use /path/to/other/modulefiles
Define modulefiles to load by default. Edit
modulerc
configuration file (modulefiles to load cannot be specified in.modulespath
file). Add there all the modulefiles you want to load by default at Modules initialization time.Add one line mentioning each modulefile to load prefixed by the
module load
command:module load foo module load bar
In fact you can add to the
modulerc
configuration file any kind of supported module command.
If you go through the above steps you should have a valid setup tuned to your
needs. After that you still have to write modulefiles to get something to
load and unload in your newly configured Modules setup. Please have a look
at the doc/example.txt
that explains how the user environment is setup
with Modules at the University of Minnesota computer science department.
Build and installation options¶
Options available at the ./configure
installation step are described
below. These options enable to choose the installation paths and the
features to enable or disable. You can also get a description of these
options by typing ./configure --help
.
Fine tuning of the installation directories (the default value for each option is displayed within brakets):
--prefix=PREFIX | |
Installation root directory [/usr/local/Modules ] | |
--bindir=DIR | Directory for executables reachable by users
[PREFIX/bin ] |
--libexecdir=DIR | |
Directory for executables called by other executables
like modulecmd.tcl [PREFIX/libexec ] | |
--etcdir=DIR | Directory for the executable configuration scripts
[PREFIX/etc ] |
--initdir=DIR | Directory for the per-shell environment initialization
scripts [PREFIX/init ] |
--datarootdir=DIR | |
Base directory to set the man and doc directories
[PREFIX/share ] | |
--mandir=DIR | Directory to host man pages [DATAROOTDIR/man ] |
--docdir=DIR | Directory to host documentation other than man
pages like README, license file, etc
[DATAROOTDIR/doc ] |
--modulefilesdir=DIR | |
Directory or main modulefiles also called system
modulefiles [PREFIX/modulefiles ] |
Optional Features (the default for each option is displayed within
parenthesis, to disable an option replace enable
by disable
for
instance --disable-set-manpath
):
--enable-set-manpath | |
Prepend man page directory defined by the --mandir
option to the MANPATH environment variable in the shell
initialization scripts. (default=yes) | |
--enable-append-manpath | |
Append rather prepend man page directory to the MANPATH
environment variable when the --enable-set-manpath
option is enabled. (default=no) | |
--enable-set-binpath | |
Prepend binary directory defined by the --bindir
option to the PATH environment variable in the shell
initialization scripts. (default=yes) | |
--enable-append-binpath | |
Append rather prepend binary directory to the PATH
environment variable when the --enable-set-binpath
option is enabled. (default=no) | |
--enable-dotmodulespath | |
Set the module paths defined by --with-modulepath
option in a .modulespath file (following C version
fashion) within the initialization directory defined by
the --initdir option rather than within the
modulerc file. (default=no) | |
--enable-doc-install | |
Install the documentation files in the documentation
directory defined with the --docdir option. This
feature has no impact on manual pages installation.
Disabling documentation file installation is useful in
case of installation process handled via a package
manager which handles by itself the installation of
this kind of documents. (default=yes) | |
--enable-example-modulefiles | |
Install some modulefiles provided as example in the
system modulefiles directory defined with the
modulefilesdir option. (default=yes) | |
--enable-compat-version | |
Build and install the Modules compatibility (C) version
in addition to the main released version. This feature
also enables switching capabilities from initialization
script between the two installed version of Modules (by
setting-up the switchml shell function or alias).
(default=yes) | |
--enable-versioning | |
Append Modules version to installation prefix and deploy
a versions modulepath shared between all versioning
enabled Modules installation. A modulefile corresponding
to Modules version is added to the shared modulepath and
enables to switch from one Modules version to another.
(default=no) | |
--enable-silent-shell-debug-support | |
Generate code in module function definition and initialization scripts to add support for silencing shell debugging properties (default=yes) | |
--enable-quarantine-support | |
Generate code in module function definition and initialization scripts to add support for the environment variable quarantine mechanism (default=yes) | |
--enable-auto-handling | |
Set modulecmd.tcl to automatically apply automated modulefiles handling actions, like loading the pre-requisites of a modulefile when loading this modulefile. (default=no) |
Optional Packages (the default for each option is displayed within
parenthesis, to disable an option replace with
by without
for
instance --without-modulepath
):
--with-bin-search-path=PATHLIST | |
List of paths to look at when searching the location of
tools required to build and configure Modules
(default=/usr/bin:/bin:/usr/local/bin ) | |
--with-tclsh=BIN | |
Name or full path of Tcl interpreter shell
(default=tclsh ) | |
--with-pager=BIN | |
Name or full path of default pager program to use to
paginate informational message output (can be superseded
at run-time by environment variable)
(default=less ) | |
--with-pager-opts=OPTLIST | |
Settings to apply to default pager program
(default=-eFKRX ) | |
--with-modulepath=PATHLIST | |
Default path list to setup as the default modulepaths.
Each path in this list should be separated by : .
Defined value is registered in the modulerc or
.modulespath configuration file, depending on the
--enable-dotmodulespath option. This value is read
at initialization time to populate the MODULEPATH
environment variable. By default, this modulepath is
composed of the directory set for the system modulefiles
(default=PREFIX/modulefiles or
BASEPREFIX/$MODULE_VERSION/modulefiles if versioning
installation mode enabled) | |
--with-loadedmodules=MODLIST | |
Default modulefiles to load at Modules initialization
time. Each modulefile in this list should be separated
by : . Defined value is registered in the
modulerc configuration file. (default=no) | |
--with-quarantine-vars=<VARNAME[=VALUE] …> | |
Environment variables to put in quarantine when running the module command to ensure it a sane execution environment (each variable should be separated by space character). A value can eventually be set to a quarantine variable instead of emptying it. (default=no) |