How can I share spack compiled program in a project group?

Environment

HPC4

Spack (All versions)

Issue

How to share libraries and program compiled using Spack with other group members?

Resolution

If you have compiled the libraries and program in the default user’s Spack directory, you must recompile program and libraries in a shared Spack directory, and have other group members to use the same shared Spack instance.

Managing shared Spack directory

To relocate Spack onto a shared directory, you need to set the environment variables SPACK_USER_CONFIG_PATH and SPACK_USER_CACHE_PATH and reload the spack environment.

Warning

Please assign a member as the owner (writable) of the shared Spack instance.Having multiple users to modify software in the same shared Spack directory may cause conflicts.

If there is need for multiple users to modify the software, consider sharing spack env yaml definition instead.

Create a shared Spack instance

Create a directory for Spack under /project of your group.

mkdir -p /project/my-research-group/spack

Set the environment variables and reload the spack environment

export SPACK_USER_CONFIG_PATH="/project/my-research-group/spack"
export SPACK_USER_CACHE_PATH="/project/my-research-group/spack"
. /opt/shared/spack/share/spack/setup-env.sh

This will initialize the shared Spack instance in /project/my-research-group/spack

Recompile program and libraries

You should set and reload the spack environment whenever you need to modify this shared Spack instance, instead of the default user’s Spack instance.

export SPACK_USER_CONFIG_PATH="/project/my-research-group/spack"
export SPACK_USER_CACHE_PATH="/project/my-research-group/spack"
. /opt/shared/spack/share/spack/setup-env.sh

After setting the environment variables, any spack command can be used as usual.

# spack install cmake

Using shared executables and libraries

All spack executables and libraries can be accessed via module command.

module use /project/my-research-group/spack/lmod/Core

You should find the installed software listed under the shared Spack instance’s path.

user@host:~ ]$ module avail
------------------- /project/my-research-group/spack/lmod/Core --------------------
cmake/3.xx.x-abcdefg

------------------------ /opt/shared/modulefiles/Core -----------------------------
...

Use module load to load software and libraries as usual.

Note

In case another version is available at other module locations, you should specify the version and hash to ensure the correct software is loaded.

module load cmake/3.xx.x-abcdefg

Root Cause

The default location of Spack user installation is $HOME/.spack directory.

It is not possible to share anything inside $HOME directory with your group members.