Environment Modules Updates

Modules 4.4.1 released

2020-01-03T20:57:00.001Z

Modules version 4.4.1 is out and provides substantial performance improvements as well as fixes for the few issues spotted in the 4.4 serie.

The changes introduced in this bugfix release are:

Fix error and warning messages relative to dependency management to enclose dependency specification in single quotes to clearly distinguish specification from each other.
Skip output of module loading message if module is already loaded.
Doc: add demonstration material played at SC19 to promote the new features of Modules.
Contrib: add playdemo script to play recorded demonstration cast.
Doc: add a web anchor to each modulefile Tcl command, module sub-command and module environment variable documentation.
Install: update RPM spec file to enable build on el8.
Doc: fix RST syntax for bullet lists in design docs. (fix issue #306)
In case module avail query does not match a directory but only its contained elements (for instance module av mod/7 matches mod/7.1 and mod/7.2 but not mod/), fix query processing to correctly return latest or default element in case --latest or --default flags are set.
In case a module avail query performed in a no-indepth mode with --latest or --default flags either enabled or disabled, fix query processing to return directory elements if they are part of result.
When a module avail query performed in no-indepth mode targets a virtual module, fix result to filter-out the directory holding the virtual module from result.
Fix module avail --default queries when modulefile default version does not match query: select latest version from modulefiles matching query unless implicit_default configuration is disabled in which case no default version is returned.
Improve highlighting of module avail and whatis search result by coloring module names matching search query expressed with the advanced version specifiers. name@1,3 or name@1:3 queries now highlight name/1 and name/3 strings found in search result.
Contrib: add the mlprof script which wraps modulecmd.tcl to collect profiling information on its execution.
Contrib: adapt mb script to profile modulecmd.tcl run tests rather bench them when profile argument is passed to the script.
Improve overall performances of module names and versions comparison by introducing optimized procedures and caching in memory module search results.

The list of all changes made in this new version are described in the NEWS document. Details on the new features introduced in the 4.4 series are provided in the MIGRATING document.

http://modules.readthedocs.io/en/stable/NEWS.html
http://modules.readthedocs.io/en/stable/MIGRATING.html

The tarball of this new version can be downloaded at:

http://downloads.sourceforge.net/modules/modules-4.4.1.tar.gz

If you encounter any issue, please let us know by creating a ticket on the project bug tracker at:

https://github.com/cea-hpc/modules/issues

Modules@4.4.0 released

2019-11-18T15:53:00.001Z

This is my great pleasure to announce the availability of the version 4.4.0 of Modules. The main target of this new version is to propose enhanced ways to specify modulefiles over the module sub-commands and the modulefile-specific Tcl commands. It is backward-compatible with previous version 4 releases and primarily adds features and fixes bugs. Major new features introduced in v4.4.0 since v4.3 are:

Details on these features and all the others included in this new release are provided in the MIGRATING document. The list of all changes made in this new version are described in the NEWS document.

http://modules.readthedocs.io/en/stable/MIGRATING.html
http://modules.readthedocs.io/en/stable/NEWS.html

The tarball of this new version can be downloaded at:

http://downloads.sourceforge.net/modules/modules-4.4.0.tar.gz

If you encounter any issue, please let us know by creating a ticket on the project bug tracker at:

https://github.com/cea-hpc/modules/issues

Special thanks to Eric Deveaud for his code contribution on this release.

Extended default

2019-11-14T07:10:00.001Z

The extended default mechanism has been introduced to help selecting a module when only the first numbers in its version are specified. Starting portion of the version, part separated from the rest of the version string by a . character, could be used to refer to a more precise version number.

This mechanism is activated through the new configuration option extended_default. It enables to refer to a module named foo/1.2.3 as foo/1.2 or foo/1:

$ module config extended_default 1
$ module load -v foo/1
Loading foo/1.2.3

When multiple versions match partial version specified and only one module should be selected, the default version (whether implicitly or explicitly defined) among matches is returned. The following example shows that foo/1.1.1, the foo module default version, is selected when it matches query. Elsewhere the highest version (also called the latest version or the implicit default) among matching modules is returned:

$ module av foo
--------------- /path/to/modulefiles ---------------
foo/1.1.1(default) foo/1.2.1 foo/1.10
foo/1.1.10 foo/1.2.3
$ module load -v foo/1.1
Loading foo/1.1.1
$ module purge
$ module load -v foo/1.2
Loading foo/1.2.3
$ module purge
$ module load -v foo/1
Loading foo/1.1.1

In case implicit_default option is disabled and no explicit default is found among matches, an error is returned:

$ module config implicit_default 0
$ module load -v foo/1.2
ERROR: No default version defined for 'foo/1.2'

When it is enabled, extended default applies everywhere a module could be specified, which means it could be used with any module sub-command or any modulefile Tcl command receiving a module specification as argument. It may help for instance to declare dependencies between modules:

$ module show bar/3
----------------------------------------------------------
/path/to/modulefiles/bar/3.4:
prereq foo/1.2
----------------------------------------------------------
$ module load --auto bar/3
Loading bar/3.4
Loading requirement: foo/1.2.3

Extended default activation can be controlled at configure time with the --enable-extended-default option. This option could be superseded with the MODULES_EXTENDED_DEFAULT environment variable, which could be set through the config sub-command with the extended_default option.

This new feature is available in git repository and will be included into the upcoming v4.4 release.

Please note that the extended default feature has been introduced first in Lmod, The other environment module system, some months ago. Having this very nice interface improvement also supported here will help people to get a similar module experience whether the module implementation installed. This feature is also for Modules a stepstone toward the advanced module version specifier feature that I will detail soon.

Specify modules in a case insensitive manner

2019-11-11T08:57:00.001Z

The ability to match module name in a case insensitive manner has been added. This feature can be enabled at different level with the following values set to the icase configuration option:

never: a case sensitive match is applied in any cases
search: a case insensitive match is applied to the avail, whatis and paths sub-commands
always: a case insensitive match is applied to search contexts and also to the other module sub-commands and modulefile Tcl commands for the module specification they receive as argument.

It can help for instance to load a module without knowing the case used to name its relative modulefile:

$ module config icase always
$ module load -v mysoftware
Loading MySoftware/1.0

Insensitive case match activation can be controlled at configure time with the --with-icase option, which could be passed any of the above activation levels. This option could be superseded with the MODULES_ICASE environment variable, which could be set through the config sub-command with the icase option. Command-line switch --icase supersedes in turns any other icase configurations. When this command-line switch is passed, icase mode equals always.

This new feature is available in git repository and will be included into the upcoming v4.4 release.