Background

The Spack package manager build all software from source using RPATH to avoid dependency conflicts (i.e. such software doesn't rely on LD_LIBRARY_PATH being correct). Because of this, these software must not be moved after being installed. That is, their installation paths are final.

Suggestion

Because of the above, I'd like to settle on a standard directory structure for this already now, but also because it'll be easier for everyone if all software is installed in a well-defined location. Note, I'm not talking about system / OS-level software.

Add a mount point /software/ (*) where all site-wide and communal software stacks can reside. With this, site-wide installed software can live directly under this directory, whereas communal once can live under /software/communal/. Different directories can be owned by different groups, but all should be publicly accessible by everyone. For example,

/software/spack/             # Site-wide Spack-based software
/software/manual/            # Site-wide manually installed software
/software/communal/cbc/      # Software maintained by CBC at Cancer Center
/software/communal/ihg/      # Software maintained by IHG
/software/communal/johndoe/  # Software maintained by savvy user

(*) /software/ is self explanatory for everyone. An alternative is /apps/, which is shorter (= shorter PATHs), but a bit less obvious.

UCSF-HPC / pilot-testing

Mount for software stack(s) #3

Background

Suggestion