Spack
Spack is a package management tool designed to support multiple versions and configurations of software on a wide variety of platforms and environments. It was designed for large supercomputing centers, where many users and application teams share common installations of software on clusters with exotic architectures, using libraries that do not have a standard ABI. Spack is non-destructive: installing a new version does not break existing installations, so many configurations can coexist on the same system.
Most importantly, Spack is simple. It offers a simple spec syntax so that users can specify versions and configuration options concisely. Spack is also simple for package authors: package files are written in pure Python, and specs allow package authors to maintain a single file for many different builds of the same package.
See the Feature Overview for examples and highlights.
Get spack from the github repository and install your first package:
$ git clone -c feature.manyFiles=true --depth=2 https://github.com/spack/spack.git
$ cd spack/bin
$ ./spack install libelf
Note
-c feature.manyFiles=true
improves git’s performance on repositories with 1,000+ files.
--depth=2
prunes the git history to reduce the size of the Spack installation.
If you’re new to spack and want to start using it, see Getting Started, or refer to the full manual below.
- Configuration Files
- Spack Settings (config.yaml)
- Package Settings (packages.yaml)
- Concretization Settings (concretizer.yaml)
- Environments (spack.yaml, spack.lock)
- Container Images
- Mirrors (mirrors.yaml)
- Modules (modules.yaml)
- Package Repositories (repos.yaml)
- Build Caches
- Bootstrapping
- Command Reference
- spack
- spack add
- spack arch
- spack audit
- spack blame
- spack bootstrap
- spack build-env
- spack buildcache
- spack cd
- spack change
- spack checksum
- spack ci
- spack clean
- spack clone
- spack commands
- spack compiler
- spack compilers
- spack concretize
- spack config
- spack containerize
- spack create
- spack debug
- spack deconcretize
- spack dependencies
- spack dependents
- spack deprecate
- spack dev-build
- spack develop
- spack diff
- spack docs
- spack edit
- spack env
- spack extensions
- spack external
- spack fetch
- spack find
- spack gc
- spack gpg
- spack graph
- spack help
- spack info
- spack install
- spack license
- spack list
- spack load
- spack location
- spack log-parse
- spack logs
- spack maintainers
- spack make-installer
- spack mark
- spack mirror
- spack module
- spack patch
- spack pkg
- spack providers
- spack pydoc
- spack python
- spack reindex
- spack remove
- spack repo
- spack resource
- spack restage
- spack solve
- spack spec
- spack stage
- spack style
- spack tags
- spack test
- spack test-env
- spack tutorial
- spack undevelop
- spack uninstall
- spack unit-test
- spack unload
- spack url
- spack verify
- spack versions
- spack view
- Chaining Spack Installations (upstreams.yaml)
- Custom Extensions
- CI Pipelines
- Spack Package Signing
- Using External GPU Support
- Contribution Guide
- Packaging Guide
- Overview of the installation procedure
- Writing a package recipe
- Creating new packages
- Editing existing packages
- Naming & directory structure
- Maintainers
- Trusted Downloads
- Versions and fetching
- Finding new versions
- Fetching from code repositories
- Variants
- Resources (expanding extra tarballs)
- Licensed software
- Patches
- Handling RPATHs
- Parallel builds
- Dependencies
- Conflicts and requirements
- Extensions
- Runtime and build time environment variables
- Setting package module variables
- Views
- Virtual dependencies
- Custom attributes
- Abstract & concrete specs
- Common
when=
constraints - Common default arguments
- Conflicting Specs
- Overriding build system defaults
- Multiple build systems
- The build environment
- Spec objects
- Compiler wrappers
- MPI support in Spack
- Checking an installation
- File manipulation functions
- Making a package discoverable with
spack external find
- Style guidelines for packages
- Packaging workflow commands
- Graphing dependencies
- Interactive shell support
- Package class architecture
- Specifying License Information
- Build Systems
- Developer Guide
- Spack API Docs
get_short_version()
get_spack_commit()
get_version()
spack_version_info
- Subpackages
- Submodules
- spack.audit module
- spack.binary_distribution module
- spack.build_environment module
- spack.builder module
- spack.caches module
- spack.ci module
- spack.compiler module
- spack.concretize module
- spack.config module
- spack.context module
- spack.cray_manifest module
- spack.database module
- spack.dependency module
- spack.deptypes module
- spack.directives module
- spack.directives_meta module
- spack.directory_layout module
- spack.error module
- spack.extensions module
- spack.fetch_strategy module
- spack.filesystem_view module
- spack.graph module
- spack.hash_types module
- spack.install_test module
- spack.installer module
- spack.main module
- spack.mirror module
- spack.mixins module
- spack.multimethod module
- spack.package module
- spack.package_base module
- spack.package_completions module
- spack.package_prefs module
- spack.package_test module
- spack.parser module
- spack.patch module
- spack.paths module
- spack.projections module
- spack.provider_index module
- spack.relocate module
- spack.relocate_text module
- spack.repo module
- spack.report module
- spack.resource module
- spack.rewiring module
- spack.spec module
- spack.spec_list module
- spack.stage module
- spack.store module
- spack.subprocess_context module
- spack.tag module
- spack.tengine module
- spack.traverse module
- spack.url module
- spack.user_environment module
- spack.variant module
- spack.verify module
- LLNL API Docs