Spock

This example is intended for use on Spock.

Purpose

This guide meant as an example for a user to setup a Spack environment for application development using the OLCF provided files as a template.

Warning

This guide is not intended to be a guide for a new Spack user. Please see the Spack 101 tutorial if you need assistance starting out with Spack.

The provided spack.yaml files are templates for a user to use as an example. The software environment is under active development.

The provided Spack environment files are intended to assist OLCF users in setup their development environment at the OLCF. The base environment file includes the compilers and packages that are installed at the system level.

Traditionally, the user environment is modified by module files, so a user would add use module load cmake/3.18.2 to load CMake version 3.18.2 into their environment. Using a Spack environment, a user can add an OLCF provided package and build against it using Spack without having to load the module file separately.

The information presented here is a subset of what can be found at the Spack documentation site.

Note

Definitions

  • Spack environment - A set of Spack specs for the purpose of building, rebuilding and deploying in a coherent fashion.
  • External packages - An externally-installed package used by Spack, rather than building its own package.
  • Chained instance - A Spack instance that uses any packages installed

Getting Started

Clone the OLCF User Environment repo and the Spack repo, start a new Spack instance, and create and activate a new Spack environment:

## From a Spock login

> git clone https://github.com/olcf/spack-environments.git
> cd spack-environments

> git clone https://github.com/spack/spack.git
> source spack/share/spack/setup-env.sh

> spack env create my_env linux-sles15-zen2/spock/spack.yaml
> spack env activate my_env

Now a user can add and install their dependencies with Spack and proceed with developing their application.

Chained Spack Instances

The Spock Spack environment includes this configuration addition:

upstreams:
  olcf:
    install_tree: /sw/spock/spack-envs/base/opt

This allows the user’s newly created instance to use any package installed into the above directory as if it was installed by the user.

Note

NOTE ABOUT UPSTREAM SPACK INSTALLATIONS

This other instance of Spack has no knowledge of the local Spack instance and may not have the same permissions or ownership as the local Spack instance. This has the following consequences:

  • Upstream Spack instances are not locked. Therefore it is up to users to make sure that the local instance is not using an upstream instance when it is being modified.
  • Users should not uninstall packages from the upstream instance. Since the upstream instance doesn’t know about the local instance, it cannot prevent the uninstallation of packages which the local instance depends on.

See here for more information regarding chained Spack instances.

Add Dependencies to the environment

Adding User-Defined Dependencies to the environment

These can be added to the included spack.yaml by adding to the specs section. A dependency that is not already installed will be built via Spack once the environment is concretized and installed.

specs:
- cmake@3.18.2                            ## example from above
- my_apps_dependency1@version%compiler    ## other explicitly defined specs
- my_apps_dependency2@version%compiler

Installing the Environment

When in the Spack environment, any packages that are added to the environment file can be installed via:

> spack concretize -f
> spack install

Alternatively, a user may install an individual package manually by:

> spack install <my_app_dependencies@version%compiler>

More Details

For more information regarding Spack and its usage, please see the Spack documentation.

For an extensive tutorial concerning Spack, go to the Spack 101 tutorial.

For more information concerning chaining Spack instances, please see here.

References

Authors