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Spack – scientific software package manager for supercomputers, Linux, and macOS

spack.io

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Re: Spack – scientific software package manager for supercomputers, Linux, and macOS

#41

Post by stonogo »

trollied wrote: post #26
kichimi wrote: post #4

An unfortunate name, a la Nonce Finance and Git. https://en.m.wiktionary.org/wiki/spack

This is definitely an international blunder. I’d say it’s more socially acceptable in the UK to call someone a c*t than it is to use this word. Can safely say it’ll get zero UK adoption due to the name. Shame.

Given that it's in use at Cambridge and several other HPC centers around the UK, I'm going to disagree. I think most people are cosmopolitan enough to set aside the UK's niche insult community to move forward with real work. I doubt there's any single-syllable morpheme which doesn't translate to something offensive somewhere.

Re: Spack – scientific software package manager for supercomputers, Linux, and macOS

#42

Post by stonogo »

Moissanite wrote: post #31
kichimi wrote: post #4

An unfortunate name, a la Nonce Finance and Git. https://en.m.wiktionary.org/wiki/spack

For Americans who don't want to click the link: "Spack" is basically a milder British-English version of "retard". Imagine how well the "Spaz programming language" would do in your market.

I think it would probably do fine, given we have languages like Brainfuck, image editors named The GIMP, parallel-processing tools named Linda (after the star of a pornographic film), etc.

I just don't think people are that sensitive about software naming.

There used to be a relatively popular package called "System Administrator's Tool for Analyzing Networks." A friend of mine still has a physical copy of O'Reilly's "Protecting Networks With SATAN."

Re: Spack – scientific software package manager for supercomputers, Linux, and macOS

#43

Post by [deleted] »

tgamblin wrote: post #15

Original author here -- since I know that people click the comments to decide whether to read further, here's a (biased?) summary: Spack is aimed at end users, developers, and admins. It's used primarily in HPC at the moment but it would be great to see use outside of the HPC community. Spack supports: 1. Basic installation (spack install foo, foo@3.1.2, foo@3.1.2 +option, etc.) 2. Reproducible environments, via `spa…

[deleted]

Re: Spack – scientific software package manager for supercomputers, Linux, and macOS

#44

Post by stabbles »

JorgeGT wrote: post #6

How does it compares to other HPC software managers such as easybuild?

Another point that I don't think gets emphasized a lot is that research software developers use spack as a dev tool on their laptop/cluster. Setting up easybuild locally is too much effort? If developers maintain spack recipes because they need them, it's much easier for sysadmins to deploy this software with spack too

Re: Spack – scientific software package manager for supercomputers, Linux, and macOS

#45

Post by ephimetheus »

I’ve tried to like this more than once, but once you hit some cryptic error somewhere in the build you’re not going to have a great time.

Also unfortunately it doesn’t always play nicely with lots of high energy physics software which really leans on using LD_LIBRARY_PATH and running custom executables during builds. I’ve had bad experiences with ROOT and Gaudi with no obvious paths forward for fixing things.

Re: Spack – scientific software package manager for supercomputers, Linux, and macOS

#46

Post by tgamblin »

ephimetheus wrote: post #45

I’ve tried to like this more than once, but once you hit some cryptic error somewhere in the build you’re not going to have a great time. Also unfortunately it doesn’t always play nicely with lots of high energy physics software which really leans on using LD_LIBRARY_PATH and running custom executables during builds. I’ve had bad experiences with ROOT and Gaudi with no obvious paths forward for fixing things.

Sorry to hear this. We have a lot of connections with the high energy physics community, which is why ROOT and Gaudi are even in Spack to begin with. There is an #hep channel on https://slack.spack.io, and we talk to those folks fairly frequently to figure out what we can add to support these codes better.

On `LD_LIBRARY_PATH` specifically: we intentionally inject RPATH-ing compiler wrappers into the build to avoid these types of problems, which are on by default for the ROOT and Gaudi builds. Would be curious to hear where the remaining pain points are.

Re: Spack – scientific software package manager for supercomputers, Linux, and macOS

#47

Post by kichimi »

stonogo wrote: post #42
Moissanite wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For Americans who don't want to click the link: "Spack" is basically a milder British-English version of "retard". Imagine how well the "Spaz programming language" would do in your market.

I think it would probably do fine, given we have languages like Brainfuck, image editors named The GIMP, parallel-processing tools named Linda (after the star of a pornographic film), etc. I just don't think people are that sensitive about software naming. There used to be a relatively popular package called "System Administrator's Tool for Analyzing Networks." A friend of mine still has a physical copy of O'Reilly's…

Those names dont serve to degrade people. For me, as a British person, this software is basically called Retard.

I'm not sensitive enough to care but some people will find this offensive or at least make them pause before suggesting its use. Some word filters will filter this out too.

Re: Spack – scientific software package manager for supercomputers, Linux, and macOS

#48

Post by kichimi »

b800h wrote: post #22
kichimi wrote: post #4

An unfortunate name, a la Nonce Finance and Git. https://en.m.wiktionary.org/wiki/spack

Have to say I was fairly surprised by this name. It's a fairly old-fashioned expression, but could well cause some misunderstandings.

I wouldn't say that, it sees regular use even today.

Re: Spack – scientific software package manager for supercomputers, Linux, and macOS

#49

Post by petepete »

trollied wrote: post #26
kichimi wrote: post #4

An unfortunate name, a la Nonce Finance and Git. https://en.m.wiktionary.org/wiki/spack

This is definitely an international blunder. I’d say it’s more socially acceptable in the UK to call someone a c*t than it is to use this word. Can safely say it’ll get zero UK adoption due to the name. Shame.

And then there are those of us who deal with nonce daily. I wince every time I see the word, and it's really awkward if non-technical folks hear us talking about them.

Re: Spack – scientific software package manager for supercomputers, Linux, and macOS

#50

Post by 331c8c71 »

tgamblin wrote: post #40
331c8c71 wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

+100 From what I saw the package definitions are in python. Given python is really an imperative language I don't see how spack could be comparably powerful for definitions and reuse.

The Spack DSL for defining versions, options, etc. is declarative. That part of a package exposes options to the solver and very much allows reuse, in the sense that the same package can be built many different ways, and even with different dependencies. The whole system is parameterized in ways that Nix is not. The imperative part of a Spack package is the build recipe, which AFAICT is not so different from bundling…

Thanks for the answer.

> That part of a package exposes options ... in the sense that the same package can be built many different ways, and even with different dependencies.

It is quite a common pattern in nix to have package build flags and the dependencies as inputs in a derivation. This definitely makes it possible to build in different ways and with different dependencies.

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