HeLmod (Harvard Extensions for Lmod deployment) is a software management system where:

• apps are built, packaged, and installed using RPM
• each app is installed under its own relocatable prefix
• software environments are managed with Lmod
• it's easy to manage entire software environments for multiple compiler and MPI implementations

See the doc directory for more information, specifically:

• INSTALL for initial installation and setup
• HOWTO for day-to-day usage instructions (or HOWTO-short for experienced users)
• FAQ for answers to common questions and other details

HeLmod captures all the details and hacks that go into building any given software package as shell snippets in RPM spec files. See the rpmbuild/SPECS directory for a bunch of real examples (see this FAQ item for diffing them from the template for the interesting bits).

GCB Specific Instructions

Modules are built on the rpmbuild server. New users will need to clone this repo and create a BUILD directory in helmod/rpmbuild.

High Level Process

• Setup environment variables for the module you want to build
• Download the compressed source used to build the software into rpmbuild/SOURCES/
• Copy the template.spec to a --gcb.spec file in rpmbuild/SPECS
• run make/make install in rpmbuild/SPECS editing the spec file as necessary
• run make post which stores the output files in /nfs/software/helmod/ on rpmbuild server and commits the source code. make sync can be run to just store the output files in the global location.

When running make for building modules you are running the the helmod Makefile. The rpm spec file contains commands that will configure and make your source code. If you do not wish to See the HOWTO-short instructions for further details.

NOTE One additinal step that must be manually done is to sync the modules to our HARDAC cluster. This is done by running this command on the HARDAC xfer server:

rsync -rlptoDvi --progress -e ssh /nfs/oit_software/helmod /data/itlab