Question on conflict modules in generated modulefiles

[marcodelapierre]

I was testing a modified biocontainers/samtools:v1.9-4-deb_cv1 with a 2nd alias, just to check how aliases looked like (I added bamtools: /usr/bin/bamtools).

The aliases looked right both in Lua and Tcl, however I noticed that the conflict list grew with that additional alias, both for Lua and Tcl; for Lua:

conflict(myModuleName(),"samtools","bamtools")

for Tcl:

conflict biocontainers/samtools
conflict samtools
conflict bamtools

What is the rationale behind adding a conflict for each alias name?
Also, why does the list look different for the two languages?

Thanks,

[vsoch]

I was thinking that there should always be a conflict if there is an equivalent alias. It's probably safe to remove the full name from tcl (e.g., biocontainers/samtools). Is this logical? What would happen if two loaded modules had the same alias but there was not a conflict defined?

[marcodelapierre]

I think it's probably one of those things where different people/groups will have a different take.
In the end, it's probably not a big deal, users would naturally adapt to whichever behaviour is required by the modules.

It's probably good to leave the full name though, it prevents from accidentally loading two versions of the same SHPC container module. So ... can it be added for Lua, too?