Enhancements

[Eric S. <bar...@kn...>]

At our site, we have implemented modulefiles in such a way that there
is only one set of modulefiles across all platforms.  This reduces the
effort required to keep the modulefiles up to date.  In our case the
platforms are a couple versions of Solaris and a couple versions of
Linux.  This does, however, lead to a problem for which I'd like to
suggest a solution and get the list's feedback.

The problem arises when doing a 'module avail' command.  Since all
modulefiles are in the modulefiles directory, they are all listed as
being available even though not every version of software is installed
on every platform.  In the modulefile itself the presence or absence
of a particular software package is handled by checking for the
existance of the top level directory of the software package similar
to the following:

    if { [ file isdirectory /tools/gcc/2.95.2 ] } {
    	set gcc_home /tools/gcc/2.95.2
        setenv CC gcc
        prepend-path PATH ${gcc_home}/bin
        prepend-path MANPATH ${gcc_home}/man
        prepend-path LD_LIBRARY_PATH ${gcc_home}/lib
    } else {
        break
    }

What I would like to suggest that the 'module avail' command check for
the existance of a special procedure with a reserved name in the
modulefile.  The procedure might be named something like 'Avail' and
would return TRUE if the package was really availble on the platform
on which 'module avail' was being run and FALSE otherwise.  If TRUE
was returned, 'module avail' would list the modulefile as being
available, otherwise it would not.  If no such procedure existed,
'module avail' would use the presence of the modulefile as the only
indication that the modulefile was available.

I'd be willing to try to hack in this solution unless we come up with
a better one.  Perhaps there is already a good solution and I just
don't know about it.

Thanks for your feedback.

Eric