spackter

Spackter is a tool for the creation and management of multiple spack stacks on the same system. Creation of new spack stacks can be configured in depth via multiple configuration files. Examples can be found at <SPACKTER_ROOT>/configs.

Usage (in its current state)

Source spackter's setup-env.sh script. This puts the spackter command in your path and sets required environment variables. When spackter is first executed it installs a python virtual environment with all python dependencies. Spackter requires python3.7+ and git to be installed on the system.

Creating new spack stacks

Spack stacks can be created with the spackter create command (see spackter create --help for full options).

spackter create expects a name for the spack stack as the argument. The following options are available:

• --configs=<value>: where value must be the name of one of the directories in the <SPACKTER_ROOT>/configs/. By default the default configuration is used.
• --prefix=value: where value is a path to a directory where the spack stack shall be installed. By default all spack stacks get installed to the <SPACKTER_ROOT>/spack/ directory.
• --compiler=<value>: where value is a compiler spec in spack syntax (e.g.: gcc@13.2.0). This compiler will be built as a first step in the spack stack creation and will be used to compile all packages. If this option is omitted spack will use the system compiler for building packages.
• --allow-errors=<value>: where value is a comma separated string of ['all', 'patch', 'pr', 'package', 'script']. If a step in one of the listed phases fails spackter will automatically skip it and proceed with building the spack stack.
• --no-allow-errors=<value>: where value is a comma separated string of ['all', 'patch', 'pr', 'package', 'script']. If a step in one of the listed phases fails spackter will abort. If a phase is not mentioned in this or --allow-errors the user will be promted on how to proceed if an error occurs.
• --create-mirror=<value>: where value is a path to a not yet existing directory. Spackter will create a spack mirror at this path with all packages that are being installed during creation
• --with-mirror=<value>: where value is a path to an existing spack mirror. Spackter will use this mirror during stack creation.
• --spack_branch=<value>: Spackter will use the given spack branch or tag for stack creation.
• --spack_commit=<value>: Spackter will use the given spack commit for stack creation.

Spackter configs

Multiple phases of the creation of a spack stack are configured via the files contained in the given config directory. The config directories can contain the following files:

• spack configuration files: If spack configuration files are placed in the config dir they will be copied over to the etc/spack/ directory of the created spack stack and used by spack. Spackter sets SPACK_DISABLE_LOCAL_CONFIG=1 so that spack's site configuration files are always used. If a configuration file is not present or left empty the deault spack configuration settings will be used.
• patches: if the <config-dir>/patches directory contains any *.patch files spackter will try to apply them during spack stack creation.
• Pull Requests: The pull-requests.spackter file may contain a list of pull request from the official spack github repository that spackter will try to apply during stack creation. The syntax is one PR number per line.
• packages: The package-list.spackter file may contain a list of packages that shall be installed for this spack stack. The syntax is one package per line.
• post install script: The post-install-script.spackter may contain shell commands that shall be executed at the end of spack stack creation. The script will be executed with the spack stacks root directory as current working directory.
• pre- and post-script: The pre-script.spackter and post-script.spackter files will be used to create a env.sh script that will be used to load the spack created spack stack. The pre-script part will be sourced before the setup-env-sh of the spack stack is sourced and the post-script afterwards. They can for example be used to set environment variables and to automatically load modules each time the spack stack is loaded.

For examples of all of these configurations setttings see the configs/test directory.

Listing installed spack stacks

The spackter list command gives a list of all installed spack stacks and some of their most important configuration options. The given ID for each spack stack can be used with the --id option of the following commands if there are multiple spack stacks with the same name but at different prefixes. spackter list takes an optional name/id arguments to show more information about a specific spack stack. The following options are available:

• --id: If this option is set the first argument to spackter list will be interpreted as an id instead of a name.

Loading a spack stack

The spackter load command is used to load a spack stack.

spackter load expects a name/id as the argument. The following options are available:

• --id: If this option is set the first argument to spackter load will be interpreted as an id instead of a name.
• --only-env-script: Restricts the output of the command to only the path to the spack stack's env.sh script. This can be used for easier loading of the stack inside scripts. (e.g.: . $(spackter load demo).

Deleting spack stacks

The spackter delete command will remove a spack stack.

spackter delete expects a name/id as the argument. The following options are available:

• --id: If this option is set the first argument to spackter delete will be interpreted as an id instead of a name.
• --only-spackter-entry: If this option is set the spack stack will only be removed from the spackter database and not be deleted from disk.

Adding external spack stacks

The spackter add command will add a spack stack that was not created by spackter to the database.

spackter add expects a name and a path to the root directory of the spack stack as arguments. The following Options are available:

• --env-script=<value>: A path to an env script for this stack which will be sourced when the stack is loaded. By default <SPACK_ROOT>/share/spack/setup-env.sh is used.