Re: Enhancements

[Mark L. <la...@mi...>]

sounds like a good suggestion. I think in keeping with the current calling
convention that command would be something like

 module-avail $flag

where $flag is either true or false and determined just prior to this call. If
the module-avail is not given in the module, then by default the module is
assumed to be available (i.e. to be backwards compatible with all existing
modulefiles).

examples:

 module-avail [ file isdirectory /tools/gcc/2.95.2 ]

 module-avail [ string match [ uname sysname ] "Linux" ]


The rest of the module would be the same.

Mark Lakata, Staff Engineer    1225 Charleston Road       voice 650-567-5170
MIPS Technologies              Mountain View CA 94043     fax   650-567-5002

On Thu, 21 Feb 2002, Eric Stanley wrote:

> 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
>