Small Scale project, 2021 SSC Spack repository
Initial problem
Research Software often does not only rely on a lot of upstream dependencies, but also often on specific versions or build variants of these. Maintaining a working stack of dependencies and communicating these requirements to users can be a challenge.
What we did
Spack is a package manager that allows to build consistent scientific software stacks from source. Spack is the state of the art for system administrators in HPC centers but is also increasingly popular in end user scenarios. One particular strength of Spack is the handling of build variants of packages and their dependencies. We packaged the Software Stack for the lecture Fundamentals of Computational Environmental Physics by implementing the necessary build recipes in a custom Spack repository.
Result
The complex software stack for the lecture Fundamentals of Computational Environmental Physics can be installed with very few commands.