modules for linux

[R.K. O. Ph.D. <rk...@ow...>]

Hello one & all:
Being totally unaware that there is any organized effort to develop the modules
software.  I've posted the following to the comp.os.linux.announce (c.o.l.a)
news group announcing the availability of modules for linux.

All I know is that I had to overcome several major hurdles to get
modules working on Linux (or any other system), especially starting
with the 3.0beta sources, which had the features I wanted.  I checked
with the www.modules.org webmaster & several others to see if there
was any active work.  Nothing active that I know of.

Anyways, I placed the sources under CVS and have been rewriting, fixing,
adding to, and organizing the sources.  Once I figure out how
to allow CVS server read-only access I'll announce that availibility
to this list.

I welcome any help & comments.
	R.K.
+-----------------------+----------------------------------+
| R.K.Owen,PhD          | rk...@ow...   (408)377-5373 |
| KooZ Software         |                                  |
| NERSC/LBNL            | rk...@ne...   (510)486-7556 |
+-----------------------+----------------------------------+

Announcing the availability of environment modules for Linux.
If you run on SGI/Crays or many university workstation farms
then you may be familiar with "modules".  If you don't hate them
then you probably love them.

Environment modules allows you to have different versions of
compilers & applications available simultaneously and to stop
using /usr/local/bin as a collect-all dump for every stray executable.
As an example:  If I need to look at a webpage with an earlier version
of Netscape I would do something like this:

        $ module load netscape/301
        $ netscape &

and if I want to use a later version then I would do this:
        $ module swap netscape/301 netscape/451c
        $ netscape &

Of course this relies on properly crafted modulefiles and segregated
binaries.

Environment modules really provides an easy way to modify your
environment variables (e.g. PATH, MANPATH, etc.) on the fly, which
is a lot easier than trying to change your dot files.

I have taken the 3.0beta sources from ftp.modules.org, fixed
the collection of obvious bugs,  added the features to the
code the documentation claimed it had, and generally ported it
to the Linux environment.

Read the INSTALL document, which describes a pedestrian approach
to enabling environment modules.

I have included several scripts and examples to help things along.
However, you should be fairly adept as a system administrator.

Send comments & worthy questions to mo...@ko....
(If your questions can be handled by reading the documents
then I'll just respond with RTFM.)

        R.K. Owen, Ph.D.
        mo...@ko...

Begin3
Title:          modules
Version:        3.0.0-rko
Entered-date:   11Aug1999
Description:    The Modules package provides for the dynamic modification of
		a user's environment via modulefiles. 
		Each modulefile contains the information needed to
		configure the shell for an application. Once the Modules
		package is initialized, the environment can be modified on
		a per-module basis using the module command which
		interprets modulefiles. Typically modulefiles instruct
		the module command to alter or set shell environment
		variables such as PATH, MANPATH, etc. modulefiles may be
		shared by many users on a system and users may have their
		own collection to supplement or replace the shared
		modulefiles.
		The modules environment is common on SGI/Crays and many
		workstation farms.
Keywords:       modules, user environment, shells, scripting
Author:         jl...@be... (John Furlani)
Maintained-by:  rk...@ow... (R.K. Owen) - send comments regarding
		this distribution here
Primary-site:   sunsite.unc.edu		/pub/Linux/utils/shell/
Alternate-site: ftp.scruz.net		/users/rkowen/public/modules/
Original-site:  ftp.modules.org 	/pub/distrib/
Platforms:      Unix, ANSI-C, Tcl 8.0.x
Copying-policy: BSD type license, freely distributable, viral copyright,
		only media charges for derivative work, such as this one.
End