For people new to BLIS, I can recommend this talk from the EasyBuild User Meeting (2021): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eb3dXivyTzE
7 karma · joined February 5, 2018
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Slides available at https://easybuild.io/eum23/#keynote-techtechpotato
Spack is perhaps more attractive to software developers because it has specific features for that use, like the flexible dependency handling mechanism and the concretiser.
In my view, EasyBuild is better suited than Spack to maintain a central software stack, but I'm definitely biased. :)
There's also an (now a bit outdated) talk compared EasyBuild with Spack and other alternatives like Nix/Guix which I gave a FOSDEM'18: https://archive.fosdem.org/2018/schedule/event/installing_so...
The EasyBuild User Meetings have always been very open to having talks on "competing" tools. Todd (or someone else) giving an update on recent developments in Spack is becoming a tradition (see also https://easybuild.io/eum21/#spack, https://github.com/easybuilders/easybuild/wiki/5th-EasyBuild..., etc.)
Not all of this is 100% correct, so let me pitch in:
- EasyBuild currently doesn't have an uninstall option, that's true, but since every software installation sits in its own separate directory, it basically boils down to removing that directory + the environment module file that EasyBuild generated for it;
- EasyBuild can install "binary packages" (see the 'Binary' easyblock). Examples are the Intel compilers, CUDA, etc. We don't provides pre-built binaries for software that EasyBuild installs from source though, that's true;
- EasyBuild has no "environments" concept. The closest thing perhaps is the 'Bundle' easyblock, that can be used to "glue" different environment modules together. We mostly rely on the environment modules tool (Lmod) so this, see for example module collections: https://lmod.readthedocs.io/en/latest/010_user.html#user-col...;
- EasyBuild does indeed require an environment modules tool. Both Lmod (Lua-based) and Environment Modules (Tcl-based) are supported;
- EasyBuild also supports RPATH linking (see https://docs.easybuild.io/rpath-support/), but it's not the default.
> "EB is really set up to automate a certain type of installation common in HPC"
EasyBuild is definitely geared towards installing software on HPC systems, but there's no "certain type of installation common in HPC": we support software using a wide variety of installation procedures. But maybe you're referring to installing software in a shared filesystem (NFS, usually something like /apps).