Basic Usage
The spack command has many subcommands. You’ll only need a
small subset of them for typical usage.
Note that Spack colorizes output. less -R should be used with
Spack to maintain this colorization. E.g.:
$ spack find | less -R
It is recommended that the following be put in your .bashrc file:
alias less='less -R'
If you do not see colorized output when using less -R it is because color
is being disabled in the piped output. In this case, tell spack to force
colorized output with a flag
$ spack --color always find | less -R
or an environment variable
$ SPACK_COLOR=always spack find | less -R
Listing available packages
To install software with Spack, you need to know what software is
available. You can see a list of available package names at the
packages.spack.io website, or
using the spack list command.
spack list
The spack list command prints out a list of all of the packages Spack
can install:
$ spack list
3dtk py-gosam
3proxy py-gpaw
7zip py-gpustat
abacus py-gputil
abduco py-gpy
abi-compliance-checker py-gpyopt
abi-dumper py-gpytorch
abinit py-gql
abseil-cpp py-gradio
abyss py-gradio-client
...
There are thousands of them, so we’ve truncated the output above, but you
can find a full list here.
Packages are listed by name in alphabetical order.
A pattern to match with no wildcards, * or ?,
will be treated as though it started and ended with
*, so util is equivalent to *util*. All patterns will be treated
as case-insensitive. You can also add the -d to search the description of
the package in addition to the name. Some examples:
All packages whose names contain “sql”:
$ spack list sql
mysql py-agate-sql py-mysqlclient py-sqlalchemy-migrate r-rpostgresql sqlitebrowser
mysql-connector-c py-aiosqlite py-mysqldb1 py-sqlalchemy-stubs r-rsqlite
mysqlpp py-azure-mgmt-sql py-pygresql py-sqlalchemy-utils r-sqldf
perl-dbd-mysql py-azure-mgmt-sqlvirtualmachine py-pymysql py-sqlitedict sqlcipher
perl-dbd-sqlite py-flask-sqlalchemy py-pysqlite3 py-sqlparse sqlite
postgresql py-mysql-connector-python py-sqlalchemy r-rmysql sqlite-jdbc
All packages whose names or descriptions contain documentation:
$ spack list --search-description documentation
asciidoc-py3 perl-bioperl py-interface-meta py-sphinx-tabs r-spam
byacc perl-db-file py-markdown py-sphinxautomodapi r-stanheaders
compositeproto perl-io-prompt py-mkdocs py-sphinxcontrib-websupport r-units
damageproto py-alabaster py-mkdocs-material r-downlit r-uwot
double-conversion py-astropy-helpers py-mkdocstrings r-lifecycle sowing
doxygen py-dask-sphinx-theme py-myst-parser r-modeltools texinfo
gflags py-docutils py-param r-pkgdown totalview
gtk-doc py-epydoc py-pdoc3 r-quadprog xorg-docs
libxfixes py-exhale py-python-docs-theme r-rcpp xorg-sgml-doctools
libxpresent py-fastai py-recommonmark r-rdpack
man-db py-ford py-sphinx r-rinside
ntl py-furo py-sphinx-immaterial r-roxygen2
oommf py-griffe py-sphinx-multiversion r-satellite
spack info
To get more information on a particular package from spack list, use spack info. Just supply the name of a package:
$ spack info --all mpich
AutotoolsPackage: mpich
Description:
MPICH is a high performance and widely portable implementation of the
Message Passing Interface (MPI) standard.
Homepage: https://www.mpich.org
Maintainers: @raffenet @yfguo
Externally Detectable:
True (version, variants)
Tags:
detectable e4s
Preferred version:
4.1.2 https://www.mpich.org/static/downloads/4.1.2/mpich-4.1.2.tar.gz
Safe versions:
develop [git] https://github.com/pmodels/mpich.git
4.1.2 https://www.mpich.org/static/downloads/4.1.2/mpich-4.1.2.tar.gz
4.1.1 https://www.mpich.org/static/downloads/4.1.1/mpich-4.1.1.tar.gz
4.1 https://www.mpich.org/static/downloads/4.1/mpich-4.1.tar.gz
4.0.3 https://www.mpich.org/static/downloads/4.0.3/mpich-4.0.3.tar.gz
4.0.2 https://www.mpich.org/static/downloads/4.0.2/mpich-4.0.2.tar.gz
4.0.1 https://www.mpich.org/static/downloads/4.0.1/mpich-4.0.1.tar.gz
4.0 https://www.mpich.org/static/downloads/4.0/mpich-4.0.tar.gz
3.4.3 https://www.mpich.org/static/downloads/3.4.3/mpich-3.4.3.tar.gz
3.4.2 https://www.mpich.org/static/downloads/3.4.2/mpich-3.4.2.tar.gz
3.4.1 https://www.mpich.org/static/downloads/3.4.1/mpich-3.4.1.tar.gz
3.4 https://www.mpich.org/static/downloads/3.4/mpich-3.4.tar.gz
3.3.2 https://www.mpich.org/static/downloads/3.3.2/mpich-3.3.2.tar.gz
3.3.1 https://www.mpich.org/static/downloads/3.3.1/mpich-3.3.1.tar.gz
3.3 https://www.mpich.org/static/downloads/3.3/mpich-3.3.tar.gz
3.2.1 https://www.mpich.org/static/downloads/3.2.1/mpich-3.2.1.tar.gz
3.2 https://www.mpich.org/static/downloads/3.2/mpich-3.2.tar.gz
3.1.4 https://www.mpich.org/static/downloads/3.1.4/mpich-3.1.4.tar.gz
3.1.3 https://www.mpich.org/static/downloads/3.1.3/mpich-3.1.3.tar.gz
3.1.2 https://www.mpich.org/static/downloads/3.1.2/mpich-3.1.2.tar.gz
3.1.1 https://www.mpich.org/static/downloads/3.1.1/mpich-3.1.1.tar.gz
3.1 https://www.mpich.org/static/downloads/3.1/mpich-3.1.tar.gz
3.0.4 https://www.mpich.org/static/downloads/3.0.4/mpich-3.0.4.tar.gz
Deprecated versions:
None
Variants:
Name [Default] When Allowed values Description
======================== ============================= ==================== ==============================================================
amdgpu_target [none] [+rocm] none, gfx1100, AMD GPU architecture
gfx1011, gfx900,
gfx904, gfx1101,
gfx1035, gfx1030,
gfx906, gfx909,
gfx801, gfx1012,
gfx1036, gfx1013,
gfx1102, gfx802,
gfx803, gfx902,
gfx900:xnack-,
gfx908:xnack-,
gfx90a:xnack-,
gfx1034, gfx1032,
gfx908, gfx90a,
gfx90a:xnack+,
gfx90c, gfx1010,
gfx1031, gfx1103,
gfx1033,
gfx906:xnack-,
gfx701, gfx940
argobots [off] -- on, off Enable Argobots support
build_system [autotools] -- autotools Build systems supported by the package
cuda [off] -- on, off Build with CUDA
cuda_arch [none] [+cuda] none, 11, 72, 12, CUDA architecture
35, 60, 61, 32, 10,
80, 86, 52, 37, 70,
89, 53, 87, 90, 30,
75, 62, 21, 20, 13,
50
datatype-engine [auto] [@3.4:] dataloop, yaksa, controls the datatype engine to use
auto
device [ch4] -- ch3, ch4 Abstract Device Interface (ADI)
implementation. The ch4 device is in experimental state for
versions
before 3.4.
fortran [on] -- on, off Enable Fortran support
hcoll [off] [@3.3: device=ch4 netmod=ucx] on, off Enable support for Mellanox HCOLL accelerated collective
operations library
hwloc [on] -- on, off Use external hwloc package
hydra [on] -- on, off Build the hydra process manager
libxml2 [on] -- on, off Use libxml2 for XML support instead of the custom minimalistic
implementation
netmod [ofi] -- tcp, mxm, ofi, ucx Network module. Only single netmod builds are
supported. For ch3 device configurations, this presumes the
ch3:nemesis communication channel. ch3:sock is not supported
by this
spack package at this time.
pci [on] -- on, off Support analyzing devices on PCI bus
pmi [pmi] -- off, pmi, pmi2, PMI interface.
pmix, cray
rocm [off] -- on, off Enable ROCm support
romio [on] -- on, off Enable ROMIO MPI I/O implementation
slurm [off] -- on, off Enable SLURM support
vci [off] [@4: device=ch4] on, off Enable multiple VCI (virtual communication interface) critical
sections to improve performance of applications that do heavy
concurrent MPIcommunications. Set MPIR_CVAR_CH4_NUM_VCIS=<N>
to enable multiple vcis at runtime.
verbs [off] -- on, off Build support for OpenFabrics verbs.
wrapperrpath [on] -- on, off Enable wrapper rpath
Installation Phases:
autoreconf configure build install
Build Dependencies:
argobots cray-pmi gnuconfig hsa-rocr-dev libpciaccess llvm-amdgpu pkgconfig slurm
autoconf cuda hcoll hwloc libtool m4 pmix ucx
automake findutils hip libfabric libxml2 mxm python yaksa
Link Dependencies:
argobots cuda hip hwloc libpciaccess llvm-amdgpu pmix ucx
cray-pmi hcoll hsa-rocr-dev libfabric libxml2 mxm slurm yaksa
Run Dependencies:
None
Virtual Packages:
mpich provides mpi@:4.0
mpich@:3.2 provides mpi@:3.1
mpich@:3.1 provides mpi@:3.0
mpich@:1.2 provides mpi@:2.2
mpich@:1.1 provides mpi@:2.1
mpich@:1.0 provides mpi@:2.0
Available Build Phase Test Methods:
None
Available Install Phase Test Methods:
None
Stand-Alone/Smoke Test Methods:
Mpi.test_mpi_hello Mpich.test_cpi Mpich.test_finalized Mpich.test_manyrma Mpich.test_sendrecv
Most of the information is self-explanatory. The safe versions are versions that Spack knows the checksum for, and it will use the checksum to verify that these versions download without errors or viruses.
Dependencies and virtual dependencies are described in more detail later.
spack versions
To see more available versions of a package, run spack versions.
For example:
$ spack versions libelf
0.8.13
There are two sections in the output. Safe versions are versions for which Spack has a checksum on file. It can verify that these versions are downloaded correctly.
In many cases, Spack can also show you what versions are available out on the web—these are remote versions. Spack gets this information by scraping it directly from package web pages. Depending on the package and how its releases are organized, Spack may or may not be able to find remote versions.
Installing and uninstalling
spack install
spack install will install any package shown by spack list.
For example, To install the latest version of the mpileaks
package, you might type this:
$ spack install mpileaks
If mpileaks depends on other packages, Spack will install the
dependencies first. It then fetches the mpileaks tarball, expands
it, verifies that it was downloaded without errors, builds it, and
installs it in its own directory under $SPACK_ROOT/opt. You’ll see
a number of messages from Spack, a lot of build output, and a message
that the package is installed.
$ spack install mpileaks
... dependency build output ...
==> Installing mpileaks-1.0-ph7pbnhl334wuhogmugriohcwempqry2
==> No binary for mpileaks-1.0-ph7pbnhl334wuhogmugriohcwempqry2 found: installing from source
==> mpileaks: Executing phase: 'autoreconf'
==> mpileaks: Executing phase: 'configure'
==> mpileaks: Executing phase: 'build'
==> mpileaks: Executing phase: 'install'
[+] ~/spack/opt/linux-rhel7-broadwell/gcc-8.1.0/mpileaks-1.0-ph7pbnhl334wuhogmugriohcwempqry2
The last line, with the [+], indicates where the package is
installed.
Add the Spack debug option (one or more times) – spack -d install
mpileaks – to get additional (and even more verbose) output.
Building a specific version
Spack can also build specific versions of a package. To do this,
just add @ after the package name, followed by a version:
$ spack install mpich@3.0.4
Any number of versions of the same package can be installed at once without interfering with each other. This is good for multi-user sites, as installing a version that one user needs will not disrupt existing installations for other users.
In addition to different versions, Spack can customize the compiler, compile-time options (variants), compiler flags, and platform (for cross compiles) of an installation. Spack is unique in that it can also configure the dependencies a package is built with. For example, two configurations of the same version of a package, one built with boost 1.39.0, and the other version built with version 1.43.0, can coexist.
This can all be done on the command line using the spec syntax.
Spack calls the descriptor used to refer to a particular package
configuration a spec. In the commands above, mpileaks and
mpileaks@3.0.4 are both valid specs. We’ll talk more about how
you can use them to customize an installation in Specs & dependencies.
Reusing installed dependencies
By default, when you run spack install, Spack tries hard to reuse existing installations
as dependencies, either from a local store or from remote buildcaches if configured.
This minimizes unwanted rebuilds of common dependencies, in particular if
you update Spack frequently.
In case you want the latest versions and configurations to be installed instead,
you can add the --fresh option:
$ spack install --fresh mpich
Reusing installations in this mode is “accidental”, and happening only if there’s a match between existing installations and what Spack would have installed anyhow.
You can use the spack spec -I mpich command to see what
will be reused and what will be built before you install.
You can configure Spack to use the --fresh behavior by default in
concretizer.yaml:
concretizer:
reuse: false
spack uninstall
To uninstall a package, type spack uninstall <package>. This will ask
the user for confirmation before completely removing the directory
in which the package was installed.
$ spack uninstall mpich
If there are still installed packages that depend on the package to be uninstalled, spack will refuse to uninstall it.
To uninstall a package and every package that depends on it, you may give the
--dependents option.
$ spack uninstall --dependents mpich
will display a list of all the packages that depend on mpich and, upon
confirmation, will uninstall them in the right order.
A command like
$ spack uninstall mpich
may be ambiguous if multiple mpich configurations are installed.
For example, if both mpich@3.0.2 and mpich@3.1 are installed,
mpich could refer to either one. Because it cannot determine which
one to uninstall, Spack will ask you either to provide a version number
to remove the ambiguity or use the --all option to uninstall all of
the matching packages.
You may force uninstall a package with the --force option
$ spack uninstall --force mpich
but you risk breaking other installed packages. In general, it is safer to
remove dependent packages before removing their dependencies or use the
--dependents option.
Garbage collection
When Spack builds software from sources, if often installs tools that are needed
just to build or test other software. These are not necessary at runtime.
To support cases where removing these tools can be a benefit Spack provides
the spack gc (“garbage collector”) command, which will uninstall all unneeded packages:
$ spack find
==> 24 installed packages
-- linux-ubuntu18.04-broadwell / gcc@9.0.1 ----------------------
autoconf@2.69 findutils@4.6.0 libiconv@1.16 libszip@2.1.1 m4@1.4.18 openjpeg@2.3.1 pkgconf@1.6.3 util-macros@1.19.1
automake@1.16.1 gdbm@1.18.1 libpciaccess@0.13.5 libtool@2.4.6 mpich@3.3.2 openssl@1.1.1d readline@8.0 xz@5.2.4
cmake@3.16.1 hdf5@1.10.5 libsigsegv@2.12 libxml2@2.9.9 ncurses@6.1 perl@5.30.0 texinfo@6.5 zlib@1.2.11
$ spack gc
==> The following packages will be uninstalled:
-- linux-ubuntu18.04-broadwell / gcc@9.0.1 ----------------------
vn47edz autoconf@2.69 6m3f2qn findutils@4.6.0 ubl6bgk libtool@2.4.6 pksawhz openssl@1.1.1d urdw22a readline@8.0
ki6nfw5 automake@1.16.1 fklde6b gdbm@1.18.1 b6pswuo m4@1.4.18 k3s2csy perl@5.30.0 lp5ya3t texinfo@6.5
ylvgsov cmake@3.16.1 5omotir libsigsegv@2.12 leuzbbh ncurses@6.1 5vmfbrq pkgconf@1.6.3 5bmv4tg util-macros@1.19.1
==> Do you want to proceed? [y/N] y
[ ... ]
$ spack find
==> 9 installed packages
-- linux-ubuntu18.04-broadwell / gcc@9.0.1 ----------------------
hdf5@1.10.5 libiconv@1.16 libpciaccess@0.13.5 libszip@2.1.1 libxml2@2.9.9 mpich@3.3.2 openjpeg@2.3.1 xz@5.2.4 zlib@1.2.11
In the example above Spack went through all the packages in the package database and removed everything that is not either:
A package installed upon explicit request of the user
A
linkorrundependency, even transitive, of one of the packages at point 1.
You can check Viewing more metadata to see how to query for explicitly installed packages or Dependency types for a more thorough treatment of dependency types.
Marking packages explicit or implicit
By default, Spack will mark packages a user installs as explicitly installed,
while all of its dependencies will be marked as implicitly installed. Packages
can be marked manually as explicitly or implicitly installed by using
spack mark. This can be used in combination with spack gc to clean up
packages that are no longer required.
$ spack install m4
==> 29005: Installing libsigsegv
[...]
==> 29005: Installing m4
[...]
$ spack install m4 ^libsigsegv@2.11
==> 39798: Installing libsigsegv
[...]
==> 39798: Installing m4
[...]
$ spack find -d
==> 4 installed packages
-- linux-fedora32-haswell / gcc@10.1.1 --------------------------
libsigsegv@2.11
libsigsegv@2.12
m4@1.4.18
libsigsegv@2.12
m4@1.4.18
libsigsegv@2.11
$ spack gc
==> There are no unused specs. Spack's store is clean.
$ spack mark -i m4 ^libsigsegv@2.11
==> m4@1.4.18 : marking the package implicit
$ spack gc
==> The following packages will be uninstalled:
-- linux-fedora32-haswell / gcc@10.1.1 --------------------------
5fj7p2o libsigsegv@2.11 c6ensc6 m4@1.4.18
==> Do you want to proceed? [y/N]
In the example above, we ended up with two versions of m4 since they depend
on different versions of libsigsegv. spack gc will not remove any of
the packages since both versions of m4 have been installed explicitly
and both versions of libsigsegv are required by the m4 packages.
spack mark can also be used to implement upgrade workflows. The following
example demonstrates how the spack mark and spack gc can be used to
only keep the current version of a package installed.
When updating Spack via git pull, new versions for either libsigsegv
or m4 might be introduced. This will cause Spack to install duplicates.
Since we only want to keep one version, we mark everything as implicitly
installed before updating Spack. If there is no new version for either of the
packages, spack install will simply mark them as explicitly installed and
spack gc will not remove them.
$ spack install m4
==> 62843: Installing libsigsegv
[...]
==> 62843: Installing m4
[...]
$ spack mark -i -a
==> m4@1.4.18 : marking the package implicit
$ git pull
[...]
$ spack install m4
[...]
==> m4@1.4.18 : marking the package explicit
[...]
$ spack gc
==> There are no unused specs. Spack's store is clean.
When using this workflow for installations that contain more packages, care
has to be taken to either only mark selected packages or issue spack install
for all packages that should be kept.
You can check Viewing more metadata to see how to query for explicitly or implicitly installed packages.
Non-Downloadable Tarballs
The tarballs for some packages cannot be automatically downloaded by Spack. This could be for a number of reasons:
The author requires users to manually accept a license agreement before downloading (
jdkandgalahad).The software is proprietary and cannot be downloaded on the open Internet.
To install these packages, one must create a mirror and manually add the tarballs in question to it (see Mirrors (mirrors.yaml)):
Create a directory for the mirror. You can create this directory anywhere you like, it does not have to be inside
~/.spack:$ mkdir ~/.spack/manual_mirror
Register the mirror with Spack by creating
~/.spack/mirrors.yaml:mirrors: manual: file://~/.spack/manual_mirror
Put your tarballs in it. Tarballs should be named
<package>/<package>-<version>.tar.gz. For example:$ ls -l manual_mirror/galahad -rw-------. 1 me me 11657206 Jun 21 19:25 galahad-2.60003.tar.gz
Install as usual:
$ spack install galahad
Seeing installed packages
We know that spack list shows you the names of available packages,
but how do you figure out which are already installed?
spack find
spack find shows the specs of installed packages. A spec is
like a name, but it has a version, compiler, architecture, and build
options associated with it. In spack, you can have many installations
of the same package with different specs.
Running spack find with no arguments lists installed packages:
$ spack find
==> 74 installed packages.
-- linux-debian7-x86_64 / gcc@4.4.7 --------------------------------
ImageMagick@6.8.9-10 libdwarf@20130729 py-dateutil@2.4.0
adept-utils@1.0 libdwarf@20130729 py-ipython@2.3.1
atk@2.14.0 libelf@0.8.12 py-matplotlib@1.4.2
boost@1.55.0 libelf@0.8.13 py-nose@1.3.4
bzip2@1.0.6 libffi@3.1 py-numpy@1.9.1
cairo@1.14.0 libmng@2.0.2 py-pygments@2.0.1
callpath@1.0.2 libpng@1.6.16 py-pyparsing@2.0.3
cmake@3.0.2 libtiff@4.0.3 py-pyside@1.2.2
dbus@1.8.6 libtool@2.4.2 py-pytz@2014.10
dbus@1.9.0 libxcb@1.11 py-setuptools@11.3.1
dyninst@8.1.2 libxml2@2.9.2 py-six@1.9.0
fontconfig@2.11.1 libxml2@2.9.2 python@2.7.8
freetype@2.5.3 llvm@3.0 qhull@1.0
gdk-pixbuf@2.31.2 memaxes@0.5 qt@4.8.6
glib@2.42.1 mesa@8.0.5 qt@5.4.0
graphlib@2.0.0 mpich@3.0.4 readline@6.3
gtkplus@2.24.25 mpileaks@1.0 sqlite@3.8.5
harfbuzz@0.9.37 mrnet@4.1.0 stat@2.1.0
hdf5@1.8.13 ncurses@5.9 tcl@8.6.3
icu@54.1 netcdf@4.3.3 tk@src
jpeg@9a openssl@1.0.1h vtk@6.1.0
launchmon@1.0.1 pango@1.36.8 xcb-proto@1.11
lcms@2.6 pixman@0.32.6 xz@5.2.0
libdrm@2.4.33 py-dateutil@2.4.0 zlib@1.2.8
-- linux-debian7-x86_64 / gcc@4.9.2 --------------------------------
libelf@0.8.10 mpich@3.0.4
Packages are divided into groups according to their architecture and compiler. Within each group, Spack tries to keep the view simple, and only shows the version of installed packages.
Viewing more metadata
spack find can filter the package list based on the package name,
spec, or a number of properties of their installation status. For
example, missing dependencies of a spec can be shown with
--missing, deprecated packages can be included with
--deprecated, packages which were explicitly installed with
spack install <package> can be singled out with --explicit and
those which have been pulled in only as dependencies with
--implicit.
In some cases, there may be different configurations of the same
version of a package installed. For example, there are two
installations of libdwarf@20130729 above. We can look at them
in more detail using spack find --deps, and by asking only to show
libdwarf packages:
$ spack find --deps libdwarf
==> 2 installed packages.
-- linux-debian7-x86_64 / gcc@4.4.7 --------------------------------
libdwarf@20130729-d9b90962
^libelf@0.8.12
libdwarf@20130729-b52fac98
^libelf@0.8.13
Now we see that the two instances of libdwarf depend on
different versions of libelf: 0.8.12 and 0.8.13. This view can
become complicated for packages with many dependencies. If you just
want to know whether two packages’ dependencies differ, you can use
spack find --long:
$ spack find --long libdwarf
==> 2 installed packages.
-- linux-debian7-x86_64 / gcc@4.4.7 --------------------------------
libdwarf@20130729-d9b90962 libdwarf@20130729-b52fac98
Now the libdwarf installs have hashes after their names. These are
hashes over all of the dependencies of each package. If the hashes
are the same, then the packages have the same dependency configuration.
If you want to know the path where each package is installed, you can
use spack find --paths:
$ spack find --paths
==> 74 installed packages.
-- linux-debian7-x86_64 / gcc@4.4.7 --------------------------------
ImageMagick@6.8.9-10 ~/spack/opt/linux-debian7-x86_64/gcc@4.4.7/ImageMagick@6.8.9-10-4df950dd
adept-utils@1.0 ~/spack/opt/linux-debian7-x86_64/gcc@4.4.7/adept-utils@1.0-5adef8da
atk@2.14.0 ~/spack/opt/linux-debian7-x86_64/gcc@4.4.7/atk@2.14.0-3d09ac09
boost@1.55.0 ~/spack/opt/linux-debian7-x86_64/gcc@4.4.7/boost@1.55.0
bzip2@1.0.6 ~/spack/opt/linux-debian7-x86_64/gcc@4.4.7/bzip2@1.0.6
cairo@1.14.0 ~/spack/opt/linux-debian7-x86_64/gcc@4.4.7/cairo@1.14.0-fcc2ab44
callpath@1.0.2 ~/spack/opt/linux-debian7-x86_64/gcc@4.4.7/callpath@1.0.2-5dce4318
...
You can restrict your search to a particular package by supplying its name:
$ spack find --paths libelf
-- linux-debian7-x86_64 / gcc@4.4.7 --------------------------------
libelf@0.8.11 ~/spack/opt/linux-debian7-x86_64/gcc@4.4.7/libelf@0.8.11
libelf@0.8.12 ~/spack/opt/linux-debian7-x86_64/gcc@4.4.7/libelf@0.8.12
libelf@0.8.13 ~/spack/opt/linux-debian7-x86_64/gcc@4.4.7/libelf@0.8.13
Spec queries
spack find actually does a lot more than this. You can use
specs to query for specific configurations and builds of each
package. If you want to find only libelf versions greater than version
0.8.12, you could say:
$ spack find libelf@0.8.12:
-- linux-debian7-x86_64 / gcc@4.4.7 --------------------------------
libelf@0.8.12 libelf@0.8.13
Finding just the versions of libdwarf built with a particular version of libelf would look like this:
$ spack find --long libdwarf ^libelf@0.8.12
==> 1 installed packages.
-- linux-debian7-x86_64 / gcc@4.4.7 --------------------------------
libdwarf@20130729-d9b90962
We can also search for packages that have a certain attribute. For example,
spack find libdwarf +debug will show only installations of libdwarf
with the ‘debug’ compile-time option enabled.
The full spec syntax is discussed in detail in Specs & dependencies.
Machine-readable output
If you only want to see very specific things about installed packages,
Spack has some options for you. spack find --format can be used to
output only specific fields:
$ spack find --format "{name}-{version}-{hash}"
autoconf-2.69-icynozk7ti6h4ezzgonqe6jgw5f3ulx4
automake-1.16.1-o5v3tc77kesgonxjbmeqlwfmb5qzj7zy
bzip2-1.0.6-syohzw57v2jfag5du2x4bowziw3m5p67
bzip2-1.0.8-zjny4jwfyvzbx6vii3uuekoxmtu6eyuj
cmake-3.15.1-7cf6onn52gywnddbmgp7qkil4hdoxpcb
...
or:
$ spack find --format "{hash:7}"
icynozk
o5v3tc7
syohzw5
zjny4jw
7cf6onn
...
This uses the same syntax as described in documentation for
format() – you can use any of the options there.
This is useful for passing metadata about packages to other command-line
tools.
Alternately, if you want something even more machine readable, you can
output each spec as JSON records using spack find --json. This will
output metadata on specs and all dependencies as json:
$ spack find --json sqlite@3.28.0
[
{
"name": "sqlite",
"hash": "3ws7bsihwbn44ghf6ep4s6h4y2o6eznv",
"version": "3.28.0",
"arch": {
"platform": "darwin",
"platform_os": "mojave",
"target": "x86_64"
},
"compiler": {
"name": "apple-clang",
"version": "10.0.0"
},
"namespace": "builtin",
"parameters": {
"fts": true,
"functions": false,
"cflags": [],
"cppflags": [],
"cxxflags": [],
"fflags": [],
"ldflags": [],
"ldlibs": []
},
"dependencies": {
"readline": {
"hash": "722dzmgymxyxd6ovjvh4742kcetkqtfs",
"type": [
"build",
"link"
]
}
}
},
...
]
You can use this with tools like jq to quickly create JSON records structured the way you want:
$ spack find --json sqlite@3.28.0 | jq -C '.[] | { name, version, hash }'
{
"name": "sqlite",
"version": "3.28.0",
"hash": "3ws7bsihwbn44ghf6ep4s6h4y2o6eznv"
}
{
"name": "readline",
"version": "7.0",
"hash": "722dzmgymxyxd6ovjvh4742kcetkqtfs"
}
{
"name": "ncurses",
"version": "6.1",
"hash": "zvaa4lhlhilypw5quj3akyd3apbq5gap"
}
spack diff
It’s often the case that you have two versions of a spec that you need to disambiguate. Let’s say that we’ve installed two variants of zlib, one with and one without the optimize variant:
$ spack install zlib
$ spack install zlib -optimize
When we do spack find we see the two versions.
$ spack find zlib
==> 2 installed packages
-- linux-ubuntu20.04-skylake / gcc@9.3.0 ------------------------
zlib@1.2.11 zlib@1.2.11
Let’s now say that we want to uninstall zlib. We run the command, and hit a problem real quickly since we have two!
$ spack uninstall zlib
==> Error: zlib matches multiple packages:
-- linux-ubuntu20.04-skylake / gcc@9.3.0 ------------------------
efzjziy zlib@1.2.11 sl7m27m zlib@1.2.11
==> Error: You can either:
a) use a more specific spec, or
b) specify the spec by its hash (e.g. `spack uninstall /hash`), or
c) use `spack uninstall --all` to uninstall ALL matching specs.
Oh no! We can see from the above that we have two different versions of zlib installed,
and the only difference between the two is the hash. This is a good use case for
spack diff, which can easily show us the “diff” or set difference
between properties for two packages. Let’s try it out.
Since the only difference we see in the spack find view is the hash, let’s use
spack diff to look for more detail. We will provide the two hashes:
$ spack diff /efzjziy /sl7m27m
==> Warning: This interface is subject to change.
--- zlib@1.2.11efzjziyc3dmb5h5u5azsthgbgog5mj7g
+++ zlib@1.2.11sl7m27mzkbejtkrajigj3a3m37ygv4u2
@@ variant_value @@
- zlib optimize False
+ zlib optimize True
The output is colored, and written in the style of a git diff. This means that you can copy and paste it into a GitHub markdown as a code block with language “diff” and it will render nicely! Here is an example:
```diff
--- zlib@1.2.11/efzjziyc3dmb5h5u5azsthgbgog5mj7g
+++ zlib@1.2.11/sl7m27mzkbejtkrajigj3a3m37ygv4u2
@@ variant_value @@
- zlib optimize False
+ zlib optimize True
```
Awesome! Now let’s read the diff. It tells us that our first zlib was built with ~optimize
(False) and the second was built with +optimize (True). You can’t see it in the docs
here, but the output above is also colored based on the content being an addition (+) or
subtraction (-).
This is a small example, but you will be able to see differences for any attributes on the
installation spec. Running spack diff A B means we’ll see which spec attributes are on
B but not on A (green) and which are on A but not on B (red). Here is another
example with an additional difference type, version:
$ spack diff python@2.7.8 python@3.8.11
==> Warning: This interface is subject to change.
--- python@2.7.8/tsxdi6gl4lihp25qrm4d6nys3nypufbf
+++ python@3.8.11/yjtseru4nbpllbaxb46q7wfkyxbuvzxx
@@ variant_value @@
- python patches a8c52415a8b03c0e5f28b5d52ae498f7a7e602007db2b9554df28cd5685839b8
+ python patches 0d98e93189bc278fbc37a50ed7f183bd8aaf249a8e1670a465f0db6bb4f8cf87
@@ version @@
- openssl 1.0.2u
+ openssl 1.1.1k
- python 2.7.8
+ python 3.8.11
Let’s say that we were only interested in one kind of attribute above, version.
We can ask the command to only output this attribute. To do this, you’d add
the --attribute for attribute parameter, which defaults to all. Here is how you
would filter to show just versions:
$ spack diff --attribute version python@2.7.8 python@3.8.11
==> Warning: This interface is subject to change.
--- python@2.7.8/tsxdi6gl4lihp25qrm4d6nys3nypufbf
+++ python@3.8.11/yjtseru4nbpllbaxb46q7wfkyxbuvzxx
@@ version @@
- openssl 1.0.2u
+ openssl 1.1.1k
- python 2.7.8
+ python 3.8.11
And you can add as many attributes as you’d like with multiple –attribute arguments
(for lots of attributes, you can use -a for short). Finally, if you want to view the
data as json (and possibly pipe into an output file) just add --json:
$ spack diff --json python@2.7.8 python@3.8.11
This data will be much longer because along with the differences for A vs. B and
B vs. A, the JSON output also showsthe intersection.
Using installed packages
There are several different ways to use Spack packages once you have installed them. As you’ve seen, spack packages are installed into long paths with hashes, and you need a way to get them into your path. The easiest way is to use spack load, which is described in the next section.
Some more advanced ways to use Spack packages include:
environments, which you can use to bundle a number of related packages to “activate” all at once, and
environment modules, which are commonly used on supercomputing clusters. Spack generates module files for every installation automatically, and you can customize how this is done.
spack load / unload
If you have shell support enabled you can use the
spack load command to quickly get a package on your PATH.
For example this will add the mpich package built with gcc to
your path:
$ spack install mpich %gcc@4.4.7
# ... wait for install ...
$ spack load mpich %gcc@4.4.7
$ which mpicc
~/spack/opt/linux-debian7-x86_64/gcc@4.4.7/mpich@3.0.4/bin/mpicc
These commands will add appropriate directories to your PATH
and MANPATH according to the
prefix inspections defined in your
modules configuration.
When you no longer want to use a package, you can type unload or
unuse similarly:
$ spack unload mpich %gcc@4.4.7
Ambiguous specs
If a spec used with load/unload or is ambiguous (i.e. more than one installed package matches it), then Spack will warn you:
$ spack load libelf
==> Error: libelf matches multiple packages.
Matching packages:
qmm4kso libelf@0.8.13%gcc@4.4.7 arch=linux-debian7-x86_64
cd2u6jt libelf@0.8.13%intel@15.0.0 arch=linux-debian7-x86_64
Use a more specific spec
You can either type the spack load command again with a fully
qualified argument, or you can add just enough extra constraints to
identify one package. For example, above, the key differentiator is
that one libelf is built with the Intel compiler, while the other
used gcc. You could therefore just type:
$ spack load libelf %intel
To identify just the one built with the Intel compiler. If you want to be
very specific, you can load it by its hash. For example, to load the
first libelf above, you would run:
$ spack load /qmm4kso
To see which packages that you have loaded to your environment you would
use spack find --loaded.
$ spack find --loaded
==> 2 installed packages
-- linux-debian7 / gcc@4.4.7 ------------------------------------
libelf@0.8.13
-- linux-debian7 / intel@15.0.0 ---------------------------------
libelf@0.8.13
You can also use spack load --list to get the same output, but it
does not have the full set of query options that spack find offers.
We’ll learn more about Spack’s spec syntax in the next section.
Specs & dependencies
We know that spack install, spack uninstall, and other
commands take a package name with an optional version specifier. In
Spack, that descriptor is called a spec. Spack uses specs to refer
to a particular build configuration (or configurations) of a package.
Specs are more than a package name and a version; you can use them to
specify the compiler, compiler version, architecture, compile options,
and dependency options for a build. In this section, we’ll go over
the full syntax of specs.
Here is an example of a much longer spec than we’ve seen thus far:
mpileaks @1.2:1.4 %gcc@4.7.5 +debug -qt target=x86_64 ^callpath @1.1 %gcc@4.7.2
If provided to spack install, this will install the mpileaks
library at some version between 1.2 and 1.4 (inclusive),
built using gcc at version 4.7.5 for a generic x86_64 architecture,
with debug options enabled, and without Qt support. Additionally, it
says to link it with the callpath library (which it depends on),
and to build callpath with gcc 4.7.2. Most specs will not be as
complicated as this one, but this is a good example of what is
possible with specs.
More formally, a spec consists of the following pieces:
Package name identifier (
mpileaksabove)@Optional version specifier (@1.2:1.4)%Optional compiler specifier, with an optional compiler version (gccorgcc@4.7.3)+or-or~Optional variant specifiers (+debug,-qt, or~qt) for boolean variants. Use++or--or~~to propagate variants through the dependencies (++debug,--qt, or~~qt).name=<value>Optional variant specifiers that are not restricted to boolean variants. Usename==<value>to propagate variant through the dependencies.name=<value>Optional compiler flag specifiers. Valid flag names arecflags,cxxflags,fflags,cppflags,ldflags, andldlibs. Usename==<value>to propagate compiler flags through the dependencies.target=<value> os=<value>Optional architecture specifier (target=haswell os=CNL10)^Dependency specs (^callpath@1.1)
There are two things to notice here. The first is that specs are
recursively defined. That is, each dependency after ^ is a spec
itself. The second is that everything is optional except for the
initial package name identifier. Users can be as vague or as specific
as they want about the details of building packages, and this makes
spack good for beginners and experts alike.
To really understand what’s going on above, we need to think about how
software is structured. An executable or a library (these are
generally the artifacts produced by building software) depends on
other libraries in order to run. We can represent the relationship
between a package and its dependencies as a graph. Here is the full
dependency graph for mpileaks:
Each box above is a package and each arrow represents a dependency on
some other package. For example, we say that the package mpileaks
depends on callpath and mpich. mpileaks also depends
indirectly on dyninst, libdwarf, and libelf, in that
these libraries are dependencies of callpath. To install
mpileaks, Spack has to build all of these packages. Dependency
graphs in Spack have to be acyclic, and the depends on relationship
is directional, so this is a directed, acyclic graph or DAG.
The package name identifier in the spec is the root of some dependency
DAG, and the DAG itself is implicit. Spack knows the precise
dependencies among packages, but users do not need to know the full
DAG structure. Each ^ in the full spec refers to some dependency
of the root package. Spack will raise an error if you supply a name
after ^ that the root does not actually depend on (e.g. mpileaks
^emacs@23.3).
Spack further simplifies things by only allowing one configuration of
each package within any single build. Above, both mpileaks and
callpath depend on mpich, but mpich appears only once in
the DAG. You cannot build an mpileaks version that depends on one
version of mpich and on a callpath version that depends on
some other version of mpich. In general, such a configuration
would likely behave unexpectedly at runtime, and Spack enforces this
to ensure a consistent runtime environment.
The point of specs is to abstract this full DAG from Spack users. If
a user does not care about the DAG at all, she can refer to mpileaks
by simply writing mpileaks. If she knows that mpileaks
indirectly uses dyninst and she wants a particular version of
dyninst, then she can refer to mpileaks ^dyninst@8.1. Spack
will fill in the rest when it parses the spec; the user only needs to
know package names and minimal details about their relationship.
When spack prints out specs, it sorts package names alphabetically to normalize the way they are displayed, but users do not need to worry about this when they write specs. The only restriction on the order of dependencies within a spec is that they appear after the root package. For example, these two specs represent exactly the same configuration:
mpileaks ^callpath@1.0 ^libelf@0.8.3
mpileaks ^libelf@0.8.3 ^callpath@1.0
You can put all the same modifiers on dependency specs that you would
put on the root spec. That is, you can specify their versions,
compilers, variants, and architectures just like any other spec.
Specifiers are associated with the nearest package name to their left.
For example, above, @1.1 and %gcc@4.7.2 associates with the
callpath package, while @1.2:1.4, %gcc@4.7.5, +debug,
-qt, and target=haswell os=CNL10 all associate with the mpileaks package.
In the diagram above, mpileaks depends on mpich with an
unspecified version, but packages can depend on other packages with
constraints by adding more specifiers. For example, mpileaks
could depend on mpich@1.2: if it can only build with version
1.2 or higher of mpich.
Below are more details about the specifiers that you can add to specs.
Version specifier
A version specifier pkg@<specifier> comes after a package name
and starts with @. It can be something abstract that matches
multiple known versions, or a specific version. During concretization,
Spack will pick the optimal version within the spec’s constraints
according to policies set for the particular Spack installation.
The version specifier can be a specific version, such as @=1.0.0 or
@=1.2a7. Or, it can be a range of versions, such as @1.0:1.5.
Version ranges are inclusive, so this example includes both 1.0
and any 1.5.x version. Version ranges can be unbounded, e.g. @:3
means any version up to and including 3. This would include 3.4
and 3.4.2. Similarly, @4.2: means any version above and including
4.2. As a short-hand, @3 is equivalent to the range @3:3 and
includes any version with major version 3.
Notice that you can distinguish between the specific version @=3.2 and
the range @3.2. This is useful for packages that follow a versioning
scheme that omits the zero patch version number: 3.2, 3.2.1,
3.2.2, etc. In general it is preferable to use the range syntax
@3.2, since ranges also match versions with one-off suffixes, such as
3.2-custom.
A version specifier can also be a list of ranges and specific versions,
separated by commas. For example, @1.0:1.5,=1.7.1 matches any version
in the range 1.0:1.5 and the specific version 1.7.1.
For packages with a git attribute, git references
may be specified instead of a numerical version i.e. branches, tags
and commits. Spack will stage and build based off the git
reference provided. Acceptable syntaxes for this are:
# commit hashes
foo@abcdef1234abcdef1234abcdef1234abcdef1234 # 40 character hashes are automatically treated as git commits
foo@git.abcdef1234abcdef1234abcdef1234abcdef1234
# branches and tags
foo@git.develop # use the develop branch
foo@git.0.19 # use the 0.19 tag
Spack always needs to associate a Spack version with the git reference, which is used for version comparison. This Spack version is heuristically taken from the closest valid git tag among ancestors of the git ref.
Once a Spack version is associated with a git ref, it always printed with
the git ref. For example, if the commit @git.abcdefg is tagged
0.19, then the spec will be shown as @git.abcdefg=0.19.
If the git ref is not exactly a tag, then the distance to the nearest tag
is also part of the resolved version. @git.abcdefg=0.19.git.8 means
that the commit is 8 commits away from the 0.19 tag.
In cases where Spack cannot resolve a sensible version from a git ref,
users can specify the Spack version to use for the git ref. This is done
by appending = and the Spack version to the git ref. For example:
foo@git.my_ref=3.2 # use the my_ref tag or branch, but treat it as version 3.2 for version comparisons
foo@git.abcdef1234abcdef1234abcdef1234abcdef1234=develop # use the given commit, but treat it as develop for version comparisons
Details about how versions are compared and how Spack determines if one version is less than another are discussed in the developer guide.
Compiler specifier
A compiler specifier comes somewhere after a package name and starts
with %. It tells Spack what compiler(s) a particular package
should be built with. After the % should come the name of some
registered Spack compiler. This might include gcc, or intel,
but the specific compilers available depend on the site. You can run
spack compilers to get a list; more on this below.
The compiler spec can be followed by an optional compiler version. A compiler version specifier looks exactly like a package version specifier. Version specifiers will associate with the nearest package name or compiler specifier to their left in the spec.
If the compiler spec is omitted, Spack will choose a default compiler based on site policies.
Variants
Variants are named options associated with a particular package. They are
optional, as each package must provide default values for each variant it
makes available. Variants can be specified using
a flexible parameter syntax name=<value>. For example,
spack install mercury debug=True will install mercury built with debug
flags. The names of particular variants available for a package depend on
what was provided by the package author. spack info <package> will
provide information on what build variants are available.
For compatibility with earlier versions, variants which happen to be
boolean in nature can be specified by a syntax that represents turning
options on and off. For example, in the previous spec we could have
supplied mercury +debug with the same effect of enabling the debug
compile time option for the libelf package.
Depending on the package a variant may have any default value. For
mercury here, debug is False by default, and we turned it on
with debug=True or +debug. If a variant is True by default
you can turn it off by either adding -name or ~name to the spec.
There are two syntaxes here because, depending on context, ~ and
- may mean different things. In most shells, the following will
result in the shell performing home directory substitution:
mpileaks ~debug # shell may try to substitute this!
mpileaks~debug # use this instead
If there is a user called debug, the ~ will be incorrectly
expanded. In this situation, you would want to write libelf
-debug. However, - can be ambiguous when included after a
package name without spaces:
mpileaks-debug # wrong!
mpileaks -debug # right
Spack allows the - character to be part of package names, so the
above will be interpreted as a request for the mpileaks-debug
package, not a request for mpileaks built without debug
options. In this scenario, you should write mpileaks~debug to
avoid ambiguity.
When spack normalizes specs, it prints them out with no spaces boolean
variants using the backwards compatibility syntax and uses only ~
for disabled boolean variants. The - and spaces on the command
line are provided for convenience and legibility.
Spack allows variants to propagate their value to the package’s
dependency by using ++, --, and ~~ for boolean variants.
For example, for a debug variant:
mpileaks ++debug # enabled debug will be propagated to dependencies
mpileaks +debug # only mpileaks will have debug enabled
To propagate the value of non-boolean variants Spack uses name==value.
For example, for the stackstart variant:
mpileaks stackstart==4 # variant will be propagated to dependencies
mpileaks stackstart=4 # only mpileaks will have this variant value
Compiler Flags
Compiler flags are specified using the same syntax as non-boolean variants,
but fulfill a different purpose. While the function of a variant is set by
the package, compiler flags are used by the compiler wrappers to inject
flags into the compile line of the build. Additionally, compiler flags can
be inherited by dependencies by using ==.
spack install libdwarf cppflags=="-g" will install both libdwarf and
libelf with the -g flag injected into their compile line.
Note
versions of spack prior to 0.19.0 will propagate compiler flags using
the = syntax.
Notice that the value of the compiler flags must be quoted if it
contains any spaces. Any of cppflags=-O3, cppflags="-O3",
cppflags='-O3', and cppflags="-O3 -fPIC" are acceptable, but
cppflags=-O3 -fPIC is not. Additionally, if the value of the
compiler flags is not the last thing on the line, it must be followed
by a space. The command spack install libelf cppflags="-O3"%intel
will be interpreted as an attempt to set cppflags="-O3%intel".
The six compiler flags are injected in the order of implicit make commands
in GNU Autotools. If all flags are set, the order is
$cppflags $cflags|$cxxflags $ldflags <command> $ldlibs for C and C++ and
$fflags $cppflags $ldflags <command> $ldlibs for Fortran.
Compiler environment variables and additional RPATHs
Sometimes compilers require setting special environment variables to
operate correctly. Spack handles these cases by allowing custom environment
modifications in the environment attribute of the compiler configuration
section. See also the Environment Modifications section
of the configuration files docs for more information.
It is also possible to specify additional RPATHs that the
compiler will add to all executables generated by that compiler. This is
useful for forcing certain compilers to RPATH their own runtime libraries, so
that executables will run without the need to set LD_LIBRARY_PATH.
compilers:
- compiler:
spec: gcc@4.9.3
paths:
cc: /opt/gcc/bin/gcc
c++: /opt/gcc/bin/g++
f77: /opt/gcc/bin/gfortran
fc: /opt/gcc/bin/gfortran
environment:
unset:
- BAD_VARIABLE
set:
GOOD_VARIABLE_NUM: 1
GOOD_VARIABLE_STR: good
prepend_path:
PATH: /path/to/binutils
append_path:
LD_LIBRARY_PATH: /opt/gcc/lib
extra_rpaths:
- /path/to/some/compiler/runtime/directory
- /path/to/some/other/compiler/runtime/directory
Architecture specifiers
Each node in the dependency graph of a spec has an architecture attribute.
This attribute is a triplet of platform, operating system and processor.
You can specify the elements either separately, by using
the reserved keywords platform, os and target:
$ spack install libelf platform=linux
$ spack install libelf os=ubuntu18.04
$ spack install libelf target=broadwell
or together by using the reserved keyword arch:
$ spack install libelf arch=cray-CNL10-haswell
Normally users don’t have to bother specifying the architecture if they are installing software for their current host, as in that case the values will be detected automatically. If you need fine-grained control over which packages use which targets (or over all packages’ default target), see Package Preferences.
Cray machines
The situation is a little bit different for Cray machines and a detailed explanation on how the architecture can be set on them can be found at Spack on Cray
Support for specific microarchitectures
Spack knows how to detect and optimize for many specific microarchitectures
(including recent Intel, AMD and IBM chips) and encodes this information in
the target portion of the architecture specification. A complete list of
the microarchitectures known to Spack can be obtained in the following way:
$ spack arch --known-targets
Generic architectures (families)
aarch64 armv8.1a armv8.3a armv8.5a ppc64 ppcle sparc x86 x86_64_v2 x86_64_v4
arm armv8.2a armv8.4a ppc ppc64le riscv64 sparc64 x86_64 x86_64_v3
GenuineIntel - x86
i686 pentium2 pentium3 pentium4 prescott
GenuineIntel - x86_64
nocona nehalem sandybridge haswell skylake cannonlake cascadelake sapphirerapids
core2 westmere ivybridge broadwell mic_knl skylake_avx512 icelake
AuthenticAMD - x86_64
k10 bulldozer piledriver zen steamroller zen2 zen3 excavator zen4
IBM - ppc64
power7 power8 power9
IBM - ppc64le
power8le power9le
Cavium - aarch64
thunderx2
Fujitsu - aarch64
a64fx
ARM - aarch64
cortex_a72 neoverse_n1 neoverse_v1
Apple - aarch64
m1 m2
SiFive - riscv64
u74mc
When a spec is installed Spack matches the compiler being used with the microarchitecture being targeted to inject appropriate optimization flags at compile time. Giving a command such as the following:
$ spack install zlib%gcc@9.0.1 target=icelake
will produce compilation lines similar to:
$ /usr/bin/gcc-9 -march=icelake-client -mtune=icelake-client -c ztest10532.c
$ /usr/bin/gcc-9 -march=icelake-client -mtune=icelake-client -c -fPIC -O2 ztest10532.
...
where the flags -march=icelake-client -mtune=icelake-client are injected
by Spack based on the requested target and compiler.
If Spack knows that the requested compiler can’t optimize for the current target or can’t build binaries for that target at all, it will exit with a meaningful error message:
$ spack install zlib%gcc@5.5.0 target=icelake
==> Error: cannot produce optimized binary for micro-architecture "icelake" with gcc@5.5.0 [supported compiler versions are 8:]
When instead an old compiler is selected on a recent enough microarchitecture but there is
no explicit target specification, Spack will optimize for the best match it can find instead
of failing:
$ spack arch
linux-ubuntu18.04-broadwell
$ spack spec zlib%gcc@4.8
Input spec
--------------------------------
zlib%gcc@4.8
Concretized
--------------------------------
zlib@1.2.11%gcc@4.8+optimize+pic+shared arch=linux-ubuntu18.04-haswell
$ spack spec zlib%gcc@9.0.1
Input spec
--------------------------------
zlib%gcc@9.0.1
Concretized
--------------------------------
zlib@1.2.11%gcc@9.0.1+optimize+pic+shared arch=linux-ubuntu18.04-broadwell
In the snippet above, for instance, the microarchitecture was demoted to haswell when
compiling with gcc@4.8 since support to optimize for broadwell starts from gcc@4.9:.
Finally, if Spack has no information to match compiler and target, it will proceed with the installation but avoid injecting any microarchitecture specific flags.
Warning
Currently, Spack doesn’t print any warning to the user if it has no information on which optimization flags should be used for a given compiler. This behavior might change in the future.
Virtual dependencies
The dependency graph for mpileaks we saw above wasn’t quite
accurate. mpileaks uses MPI, which is an interface that has many
different implementations. Above, we showed mpileaks and
callpath depending on mpich, which is one particular
implementation of MPI. However, we could build either with another
implementation, such as openmpi or mvapich.
Spack represents interfaces like this using virtual dependencies.
The real dependency DAG for mpileaks looks like this:
Notice that mpich has now been replaced with mpi. There is no
real MPI package, but some packages provide the MPI interface, and
these packages can be substituted in for mpi when mpileaks is
built.
You can see what virtual packages a particular package provides by getting info on it:
$ spack info --virtuals mpich
AutotoolsPackage: mpich
Description:
MPICH is a high performance and widely portable implementation of the
Message Passing Interface (MPI) standard.
Homepage: https://www.mpich.org
Preferred version:
4.1.2 https://www.mpich.org/static/downloads/4.1.2/mpich-4.1.2.tar.gz
Safe versions:
develop [git] https://github.com/pmodels/mpich.git
4.1.2 https://www.mpich.org/static/downloads/4.1.2/mpich-4.1.2.tar.gz
4.1.1 https://www.mpich.org/static/downloads/4.1.1/mpich-4.1.1.tar.gz
4.1 https://www.mpich.org/static/downloads/4.1/mpich-4.1.tar.gz
4.0.3 https://www.mpich.org/static/downloads/4.0.3/mpich-4.0.3.tar.gz
4.0.2 https://www.mpich.org/static/downloads/4.0.2/mpich-4.0.2.tar.gz
4.0.1 https://www.mpich.org/static/downloads/4.0.1/mpich-4.0.1.tar.gz
4.0 https://www.mpich.org/static/downloads/4.0/mpich-4.0.tar.gz
3.4.3 https://www.mpich.org/static/downloads/3.4.3/mpich-3.4.3.tar.gz
3.4.2 https://www.mpich.org/static/downloads/3.4.2/mpich-3.4.2.tar.gz
3.4.1 https://www.mpich.org/static/downloads/3.4.1/mpich-3.4.1.tar.gz
3.4 https://www.mpich.org/static/downloads/3.4/mpich-3.4.tar.gz
3.3.2 https://www.mpich.org/static/downloads/3.3.2/mpich-3.3.2.tar.gz
3.3.1 https://www.mpich.org/static/downloads/3.3.1/mpich-3.3.1.tar.gz
3.3 https://www.mpich.org/static/downloads/3.3/mpich-3.3.tar.gz
3.2.1 https://www.mpich.org/static/downloads/3.2.1/mpich-3.2.1.tar.gz
3.2 https://www.mpich.org/static/downloads/3.2/mpich-3.2.tar.gz
3.1.4 https://www.mpich.org/static/downloads/3.1.4/mpich-3.1.4.tar.gz
3.1.3 https://www.mpich.org/static/downloads/3.1.3/mpich-3.1.3.tar.gz
3.1.2 https://www.mpich.org/static/downloads/3.1.2/mpich-3.1.2.tar.gz
3.1.1 https://www.mpich.org/static/downloads/3.1.1/mpich-3.1.1.tar.gz
3.1 https://www.mpich.org/static/downloads/3.1/mpich-3.1.tar.gz
3.0.4 https://www.mpich.org/static/downloads/3.0.4/mpich-3.0.4.tar.gz
Deprecated versions:
None
Variants:
Name [Default] When Allowed values Description
======================== ============================= ==================== ==============================================================
amdgpu_target [none] [+rocm] none, gfx1034, AMD GPU architecture
gfx906, gfx1103,
gfx904, gfx1030,
gfx802, gfx701,
gfx1036,
gfx908:xnack-,
gfx90a:xnack-,
gfx1101, gfx1032,
gfx902, gfx1011,
gfx801, gfx803,
gfx1100, gfx1031,
gfx1102, gfx90a,
gfx909, gfx90c,
gfx908, gfx1010,
gfx906:xnack-,
gfx90a:xnack+,
gfx1033, gfx900,
gfx1013, gfx1035,
gfx1012,
gfx900:xnack-,
gfx940
argobots [off] -- on, off Enable Argobots support
build_system [autotools] -- autotools Build systems supported by the package
cuda [off] -- on, off Build with CUDA
cuda_arch [none] [+cuda] none, 62, 11, 72, CUDA architecture
50, 12, 75, 90, 61,
20, 89, 80, 87, 35,
52, 30, 32, 37, 21,
86, 10, 13, 70, 53,
60
datatype-engine [auto] [@3.4:] dataloop, yaksa, controls the datatype engine to use
auto
device [ch4] -- ch3, ch4 Abstract Device Interface (ADI)
implementation. The ch4 device is in experimental state for
versions
before 3.4.
fortran [on] -- on, off Enable Fortran support
hcoll [off] [@3.3: device=ch4 netmod=ucx] on, off Enable support for Mellanox HCOLL accelerated collective
operations library
hwloc [on] -- on, off Use external hwloc package
hydra [on] -- on, off Build the hydra process manager
libxml2 [on] -- on, off Use libxml2 for XML support instead of the custom minimalistic
implementation
netmod [ofi] -- tcp, mxm, ofi, ucx Network module. Only single netmod builds are
supported. For ch3 device configurations, this presumes the
ch3:nemesis communication channel. ch3:sock is not supported
by this
spack package at this time.
pci [on] -- on, off Support analyzing devices on PCI bus
pmi [pmi] -- off, pmi, pmi2, PMI interface.
pmix, cray
rocm [off] -- on, off Enable ROCm support
romio [on] -- on, off Enable ROMIO MPI I/O implementation
slurm [off] -- on, off Enable SLURM support
vci [off] [@4: device=ch4] on, off Enable multiple VCI (virtual communication interface) critical
sections to improve performance of applications that do heavy
concurrent MPIcommunications. Set MPIR_CVAR_CH4_NUM_VCIS=<N>
to enable multiple vcis at runtime.
verbs [off] -- on, off Build support for OpenFabrics verbs.
wrapperrpath [on] -- on, off Enable wrapper rpath
Build Dependencies:
argobots cray-pmi gnuconfig hsa-rocr-dev libpciaccess llvm-amdgpu pkgconfig slurm
autoconf cuda hcoll hwloc libtool m4 pmix ucx
automake findutils hip libfabric libxml2 mxm python yaksa
Link Dependencies:
argobots cuda hip hwloc libpciaccess llvm-amdgpu pmix ucx
cray-pmi hcoll hsa-rocr-dev libfabric libxml2 mxm slurm yaksa
Run Dependencies:
None
Virtual Packages:
mpich provides mpi@:4.0
mpich@:3.2 provides mpi@:3.1
mpich@:3.1 provides mpi@:3.0
mpich@:1.2 provides mpi@:2.2
mpich@:1.1 provides mpi@:2.1
mpich@:1.0 provides mpi@:2.0
Spack is unique in that its virtual packages can be versioned, just
like regular packages. A particular version of a package may provide
a particular version of a virtual package, and we can see above that
mpich versions 1 and above provide all mpi interface
versions up to 1, and mpich versions 3 and above provide
mpi versions up to 3. A package can depend on a particular
version of a virtual package, e.g. if an application needs MPI-2
functions, it can depend on mpi@2: to indicate that it needs some
implementation that provides MPI-2 functions.
Constraining virtual packages
When installing a package that depends on a virtual package, you can opt to specify the particular provider you want to use, or you can let Spack pick. For example, if you just type this:
$ spack install mpileaks
Then spack will pick a provider for you according to site policies.
If you really want a particular version, say mpich, then you could
run this instead:
$ spack install mpileaks ^mpich
This forces spack to use some version of mpich for its
implementation. As always, you can be even more specific and require
a particular mpich version:
$ spack install mpileaks ^mpich@3
The mpileaks package in particular only needs MPI-1 commands, so
any MPI implementation will do. If another package depends on
mpi@2 and you try to give it an insufficient MPI implementation
(e.g., one that provides only mpi@:1), then Spack will raise an
error. Likewise, if you try to plug in some package that doesn’t
provide MPI, Spack will raise an error.
Specifying Specs by Hash
Complicated specs can become cumbersome to enter on the command line,
especially when many of the qualifications are necessary to distinguish
between similar installs. To avoid this, when referencing an existing spec,
Spack allows you to reference specs by their hash. We previously
discussed the spec hash that Spack computes. In place of a spec in any
command, substitute /<hash> where <hash> is any amount from
the beginning of a spec hash.
For example, lets say that you accidentally installed two different
mvapich2 installations. If you want to uninstall one of them but don’t
know what the difference is, you can run:
$ spack find --long mvapich2
==> 2 installed packages.
-- linux-centos7-x86_64 / gcc@6.3.0 ----------
qmt35td mvapich2@2.2%gcc
er3die3 mvapich2@2.2%gcc
You can then uninstall the latter installation using:
$ spack uninstall /er3die3
Or, if you want to build with a specific installation as a dependency, you can use:
$ spack install trilinos ^/er3die3
If the given spec hash is sufficiently long as to be unique, Spack will replace the reference with the spec to which it refers. Otherwise, it will prompt for a more qualified hash.
Note that this will not work to reinstall a dependency uninstalled by
spack uninstall --force.
spack providers
You can see what packages provide a particular virtual package using
spack providers. If you wanted to see what packages provide
mpi, you would just run:
$ spack providers mpi
cray-mpich intel-mpi mpich@:1.0 mpich@:3.2 mpt mvapich mvapich2-gdr openmpi@1.6.5
cray-mvapich2 intel-oneapi-mpi mpich@:1.1 mpich mpt@1: mvapich2 mvapich2x openmpi@1.7.5:
fujitsu-mpi intel-parallel-studio mpich@:1.2 mpilander mpt@3: mvapich2@2.1: nvhpc openmpi@2.0.0:
hpcx-mpi mpi-serial mpich@:3.1 mpitrampoline msmpi mvapich2@2.3: openmpi spectrum-mpi
And if you only wanted to see packages that provide MPI-2, you would add a version specifier to the spec:
$ spack providers mpi@2
hpcx-mpi mpi-serial mpich@:3.1 mpt mvapich2 mvapich2x openmpi@1.7.5:
intel-mpi mpich@:1.0 mpich@:3.2 mpt@3: mvapich2@2.1: nvhpc openmpi@2.0.0:
intel-oneapi-mpi mpich@:1.1 mpich msmpi mvapich2@2.3: openmpi spectrum-mpi
intel-parallel-studio mpich@:1.2 mpilander mvapich mvapich2-gdr openmpi@1.6.5
Notice that the package versions that provide insufficient MPI versions are now filtered out.
Deprecating insecure packages
spack deprecate allows for the removal of insecure packages with
minimal impact to their dependents.
Warning
The spack deprecate command is designed for use only in
extraordinary circumstances. This is a VERY big hammer to be used
with care.
The spack deprecate command will remove one package and replace it
with another by replacing the deprecated package’s prefix with a link
to the deprecator package’s prefix.
Warning
The spack deprecate command makes no promises about binary
compatibility. It is up to the user to ensure the deprecator is
suitable for the deprecated package.
Spack tracks concrete deprecated specs and ensures that no future packages concretize to a deprecated spec.
The first spec given to the spack deprecate command is the package
to deprecate. It is an abstract spec that must describe a single
installed package. The second spec argument is the deprecator
spec. By default it must be an abstract spec that describes a single
installed package, but with the -i/--install-deprecator it can be
any abstract spec that Spack will install and then use as the
deprecator. The -I/--no-install-deprecator option will ensure
the default behavior.
By default, spack deprecate will deprecate all dependencies of the
deprecated spec, replacing each by the dependency of the same name in
the deprecator spec. The -d/--dependencies option will ensure the
default, while the -D/--no-dependencies option will deprecate only
the root of the deprecate spec in favor of the root of the deprecator
spec.
spack deprecate can use symbolic links or hard links. The default
behavior is symbolic links, but the -l/--link-type flag can take
options hard or soft.
Verifying installations
The spack verify command can be used to verify the validity of
Spack-installed packages any time after installation.
At installation time, Spack creates a manifest of every file in the installation prefix. For links, Spack tracks the mode, ownership, and destination. For directories, Spack tracks the mode, and ownership. For files, Spack tracks the mode, ownership, modification time, hash, and size. The Spack verify command will check, for every file in each package, whether any of those attributes have changed. It will also check for newly added files or deleted files from the installation prefix. Spack can either check all installed packages using the -a,–all or accept specs listed on the command line to verify.
The spack verify command can also verify for individual files that
they haven’t been altered since installation time. If the given file
is not in a Spack installation prefix, Spack will report that it is
not owned by any package. To check individual files instead of specs,
use the -f,--files option.
Spack installation manifests are part of the tarball signed by Spack for binary package distribution. When installed from a binary package, Spack uses the packaged installation manifest instead of creating one at install time.
The spack verify command also accepts the -l,--local option to
check only local packages (as opposed to those used transparently from
upstream spack instances) and the -j,--json option to output
machine-readable json data for any errors.
Extensions & Python support
Spack’s installation model assumes that each package will live in its
own install prefix. However, certain packages are typically installed
within the directory hierarchy of other packages. For example,
Python packages are typically installed in the
$prefix/lib/python-2.7/site-packages directory.
In Spack, installation prefixes are immutable, so this type of installation is not directly supported. However, it is possible to create views that allow you to merge install prefixes of multiple packages into a single new prefix. Views are a convenient way to get a more traditional filesystem structure. Using extensions, you can ensure that Python packages always share the same prefix in the view as Python itself. Suppose you have Python installed like so:
$ spack find python
==> 1 installed packages.
-- linux-debian7-x86_64 / gcc@4.4.7 --------------------------------
python@2.7.8
spack extensions
You can find extensions for your Python installation like this:
$ spack extensions python
==> python@2.7.8%gcc@4.4.7 arch=linux-debian7-x86_64-703c7a96
==> 36 extensions:
geos py-ipython py-pexpect py-pyside py-sip
py-basemap py-libxml2 py-pil py-pytz py-six
py-biopython py-mako py-pmw py-rpy2 py-sympy
py-cython py-matplotlib py-pychecker py-scientificpython py-virtualenv
py-dateutil py-mpi4py py-pygments py-scikit-learn
py-epydoc py-mx py-pylint py-scipy
py-gnuplot py-nose py-pyparsing py-setuptools
py-h5py py-numpy py-pyqt py-shiboken
==> 12 installed:
-- linux-debian7-x86_64 / gcc@4.4.7 --------------------------------
py-dateutil@2.4.0 py-nose@1.3.4 py-pyside@1.2.2
py-dateutil@2.4.0 py-numpy@1.9.1 py-pytz@2014.10
py-ipython@2.3.1 py-pygments@2.0.1 py-setuptools@11.3.1
py-matplotlib@1.4.2 py-pyparsing@2.0.3 py-six@1.9.0
The extensions are a subset of what’s returned by spack list, and
they are packages like any other. They are installed into their own
prefixes, and you can see this with spack find --paths:
$ spack find --paths py-numpy
==> 1 installed packages.
-- linux-debian7-x86_64 / gcc@4.4.7 --------------------------------
py-numpy@1.9.1 ~/spack/opt/linux-debian7-x86_64/gcc@4.4.7/py-numpy@1.9.1-66733244
However, even though this package is installed, you cannot use it
directly when you run python:
$ spack load python
$ python
Python 2.7.8 (default, Feb 17 2015, 01:35:25)
[GCC 4.4.7 20120313 (Red Hat 4.4.7-11)] on linux2
Type "help", "copyright", "credits" or "license" for more information.
>>> import numpy
Traceback (most recent call last):
File "<stdin>", line 1, in <module>
ImportError: No module named numpy
>>>
Using Extensions in Environments
The recommended way of working with extensions such as py-numpy
above is through Environments. For example,
the following creates an environment in the current working directory
with a filesystem view in the ./view directory:
$ spack env create --with-view view --dir .
$ spack -e . add py-numpy
$ spack -e . concretize
$ spack -e . install
We recommend environments for two reasons. Firstly, environments can be activated (requires Shell support):
$ spack env activate .
which sets all the right environment variables such as PATH and
PYTHONPATH. This ensures that
$ python
>>> import numpy
works. Secondly, even without shell support, the view ensures that Python can locate its extensions:
$ ./view/bin/python
>>> import numpy
See Environments (spack.yaml) for a more in-depth description of Spack environments and customizations to views.
Using spack load
A more traditional way of using Spack and extensions is spack load
(requires Shell support). This will add the extension to PYTHONPATH
in your current shell, and Python itself will be available in the PATH:
$ spack load py-numpy
$ python
>>> import numpy
The loaded packages can be checked using spack find --loaded
Loading Extensions via Modules
Apart from spack env activate and spack load, you can load numpy
through your environment modules (using environment-modules or
lmod). This will also add the extension to the PYTHONPATH in
your current shell.
$ module load <name of numpy module>
If you do not know the name of the specific numpy module you wish to
load, you can use the spack module tcl|lmod loads command to get
the name of the module from the Spack spec.
Filesystem requirements
By default, Spack needs to be run from a filesystem that supports
flock locking semantics. Nearly all local filesystems and recent
versions of NFS support this, but parallel filesystems or NFS volumes may
be configured without flock support enabled. You can determine how
your filesystems are mounted with mount. The output for a Lustre
filesystem might look like this:
$ mount | grep lscratch
mds1-lnet0@o2ib100:/lsd on /p/lscratchd type lustre (rw,nosuid,lazystatfs,flock)
mds2-lnet0@o2ib100:/lse on /p/lscratche type lustre (rw,nosuid,lazystatfs,flock)
Note the flock option on both Lustre mounts.
If you do not see this or a similar option for your filesystem, you have
a few options. First, you can move your Spack installation to a
filesystem that supports locking. Second, you could ask your system
administrator to enable flock for your filesystem.
If none of those work, you can disable locking in one of two ways:
Run Spack with the
-Lor--disable-locksoption to disable locks on a call-by-call basis.Edit config.yaml and set the
locksoption tofalseto always disable locking.
Warning
If you disable locking, concurrent instances of Spack will have no way
to avoid stepping on each other. You must ensure that there is only
one instance of Spack running at a time. Otherwise, Spack may end
up with a corrupted database file, or you may not be able to see all
installed packages in commands like spack find.
If you are unfortunate enough to run into this situation, you may be
able to fix it by running spack reindex.
This issue typically manifests with the error below:
$ ./spack find
Traceback (most recent call last):
File "./spack", line 176, in <module>
main()
File "./spack", line 154,' in main
return_val = command(parser, args)
File "./spack/lib/spack/spack/cmd/find.py", line 170, in find
specs = set(spack.installed_db.query(\**q_args))
File "./spack/lib/spack/spack/database.py", line 551, in query
with self.read_transaction():
File "./spack/lib/spack/spack/database.py", line 598, in __enter__
if self._enter() and self._acquire_fn:
File "./spack/lib/spack/spack/database.py", line 608, in _enter
return self._db.lock.acquire_read(self._timeout)
File "./spack/lib/spack/llnl/util/lock.py", line 103, in acquire_read
self._lock(fcntl.LOCK_SH, timeout) # can raise LockError.
File "./spack/lib/spack/llnl/util/lock.py", line 64, in _lock
fcntl.lockf(self._fd, op | fcntl.LOCK_NB)
IOError: [Errno 38] Function not implemented
A nicer error message is TBD in future versions of Spack.
Troubleshooting
The spack audit command:
$ spack audit -h
usage: spack audit [-h] SUBCOMMAND ...
audit configuration files, packages, etc.
positional arguments:
SUBCOMMAND
configs audit configuration files
externals check external detection in packages
packages-https
check https in packages
packages audit package recipes
list list available checks and exits
options:
-h, --help show this help message and exit
can be used to detect a number of configuration issues. This command detects configuration settings which might not be strictly wrong but are not likely to be useful outside of special cases.
It can also be used to detect dependency issues with packages - for example cases where a package constrains a dependency with a variant that doesn’t exist (in this case Spack could report the problem ahead of time but automatically performing the check would slow down most runs of Spack).
A detailed list of the checks currently implemented for each subcommand can be printed with:
$ spack -v audit list
generic:
Generic checks relying on global variables
configs:
Sanity checks on compilers.yaml
1. Report compilers with the same spec and two different definitions
Sanity checks on packages.yaml
1. Search for duplicate specs declared as externals
packages:
Sanity checks on specs used in directives
1. Ensure stand-alone test method is not included in build-time callbacks
2. Ensure that patches fetched from GitHub have stable sha256 hashes.
3. Report unknown or wrong variants in directives for this package
4. Report unknown dependencies and wrong variants for dependencies
5. Ensures that variant defaults are present and parsable from cli
6. Ensures that all variants have a description.
7. Report if version constraints used in directives are not satisfiable
Sanity checks on reserved attributes of packages
1. Ensure that packages don't override reserved names
Sanity checks on properties a package should maintain
1. Ensure package names are lowercase and consistent
2. Ensure that package objects are pickleable
3. Ensure that all packages can unparse and that unparsed code is valid Python
4. Ensure all versions in a package can produce a fetcher
5. Ensure the package has a docstring and no fixmes
6. Ensure no packages use md5 checksums
7. Ensure that methods modifying the build environment are ported to builder classes.
packages-https:
Sanity checks on https checks of package urls, etc.
1. Check for correctness of links
externals:
Sanity checks for external software detection
1. Test drive external detection for packages
Depending on the use case, users might run the appropriate subcommands to obtain diagnostics. Issues, if found, are reported to stdout:
% spack audit packages lammps
PKG-DIRECTIVES: 1 issue found
1. lammps: wrong variant in "conflicts" directive
the variant 'adios' does not exist
in /home/spack/spack/var/spack/repos/builtin/packages/lammps/package.py
Getting Help
spack help
If you don’t find what you need here, the help subcommand will
print out out a list of all of spack’s options and subcommands:
$ spack help
usage: spack [-hkV] [--color {always,never,auto}] COMMAND ...
A flexible package manager that supports multiple versions,
configurations, platforms, and compilers.
These are common spack commands:
query packages:
list list and search available packages
info get detailed information on a particular package
find list and search installed packages
build packages:
install build and install packages
uninstall remove installed packages
gc remove specs that are now no longer needed
spec show what would be installed, given a spec
configuration:
external manage external packages in Spack configuration
environments:
env manage virtual environments
view project packages to a compact naming scheme on the filesystem
create packages:
create create a new package file
edit open package files in $EDITOR
system:
arch print architecture information about this machine
audit audit configuration files, packages, etc.
compilers list available compilers
user environment:
load add package to the user environment
module generate/manage module files
unload remove package from the user environment
options:
--color {always,never,auto}
when to colorize output (default: auto)
-V, --version show version number and exit
-h, --help show this help message and exit
-k, --insecure do not check ssl certificates when downloading
more help:
spack help --all list all commands and options
spack help <command> help on a specific command
spack help --spec help on the package specification syntax
spack docs open https://spack.rtfd.io/ in a browser
Adding an argument, e.g. spack help <subcommand>, will print out
usage information for a particular subcommand:
$ spack help install
usage: spack install [-hnvyU] [--only {package,dependencies}] [-u UNTIL] [-j JOBS] [--overwrite] [--fail-fast]
[--keep-prefix] [--keep-stage] [--dont-restage]
[--use-cache | --no-cache | --cache-only | --use-buildcache [{auto,only,never},][package:{auto,only,never},][dependencies:{auto,only,never}]]
[--include-build-deps] [--no-check-signature] [--show-log-on-error] [--source] [--deprecated]
[--fake] [--only-concrete] [--add | --no-add] [-f SPEC_YAML_FILE] [--clean | --dirty]
[--test {root,all}] [--log-format {junit,cdash}] [--log-file LOG_FILE] [--help-cdash] [--reuse]
[--reuse-deps]
...
build and install packages
positional arguments:
spec package spec
options:
--add (with environment) add spec to the environment as a root
--cache-only only install package from binary mirrors
--clean unset harmful variables in the build environment (default)
--deprecated fetch deprecated versions without warning
--dirty preserve user environment in spack's build environment (danger!)
--dont-restage if a partial install is detected, don't delete prior state
--fail-fast stop all builds if any build fails (default is best effort)
--fake fake install for debug purposes
--help-cdash show usage instructions for CDash reporting
--include-build-deps include build deps when installing from cache, useful for CI pipeline troubleshooting
--keep-prefix don't remove the install prefix if installation fails
--keep-stage don't remove the build stage if installation succeeds
--log-file LOG_FILE filename for the log file
--log-format {junit,cdash}
format to be used for log files
--no-add (with environment) do not add spec to the environment as a root
--no-cache do not check for pre-built Spack packages in mirrors
--no-check-signature do not check signatures of binary packages
--only {package,dependencies}
select the mode of installation
default is to install the package along with all its dependencies. alternatively, one can decide to install only the package or only the dependencies
--only-concrete (with environment) only install already concretized specs
--overwrite reinstall an existing spec, even if it has dependents
--show-log-on-error print full build log to stderr if build fails
--source install source files in prefix
--test {root,all} run tests on only root packages or all packages
--use-buildcache [{auto,only,never},][package:{auto,only,never},][dependencies:{auto,only,never}]
select the mode of buildcache for the 'package' and 'dependencies'
default: package:auto,dependencies:auto
- `auto` behaves like --use-cache
- `only` behaves like --cache-only
- `never` behaves like --no-cache
--use-cache check for pre-built Spack packages in mirrors (default)
-f SPEC_YAML_FILE, --file SPEC_YAML_FILE
read specs to install from .yaml files
-h, --help show this help message and exit
-j JOBS, --jobs JOBS explicitly set number of parallel jobs
-n, --no-checksum do not use checksums to verify downloaded files (unsafe)
-u UNTIL, --until UNTIL
phase to stop after when installing (default None)
-v, --verbose display verbose build output while installing
-y, --yes-to-all assume "yes" is the answer to every confirmation request
concretizer arguments:
--reuse reuse installed packages/buildcaches when possible
--reuse-deps reuse installed dependencies only
-U, --fresh do not reuse installed deps; build newest configuration
Alternately, you can use spack --help in place of spack help, or
spack <subcommand> --help to get help on a particular subcommand.