[Modules] Issue around MANPATH in Modules 5.5.0

[Laurent B. <lau...@ea...>]

Hello dear Modules community,

I’m facing a strange « bug » (or « feature 😊) in Modules 5.5.0 around the definition of MANPATH variable.

A bit of context before : I’m running under Redhat 7 Entreprise edition. My shell is tcsh. By default, module 3.2.0 is inititialized (defined by root in /etc/ csh.cshrc) but I’m forcing a swith to 5.5.0 in my own .tcshrc

Before loading any modules, the MANPATH variable is undefined. « manpath » command is returning :

In module 3.2.0 environnment :
/usr/local/share/man:/usr/share/man/overrides:/usr/share/man
In module 5.5.0 environnment :
/home/lbesson/Tools/Modules/5.5.0/share/man:/usr/local/share/man:/usr/share/man/overrides:/usr/share/man:/home/lbesson/share/man:/dpt/adh/flow/digital/man

In module 3.2.0 environnment , $PATH is returning :
/usr/lib64/qt-3.3/bin:/usr/local/sbin:/usr/local/bin:/usr/sbin:/usr/bin:/sbin:/bin:/usr/X11R6/bin
In module 5.5.0 environnment :
/home/lbesson/Tools/Modules/5.5.0/bin:/usr/lib64/qt-3.3/bin:/usr/local/sbin:/usr/local/bin:/usr/sbin:/usr/bin:/sbin:/bin:/usr/X11R6/bin

Then, I’m loading a module which is adding/defining the MANPATH like this :

prepend-path    MANPATH /tool/platform/lsf/8.0/man

After this module load, in Modules 3.2.0, MANPATH value is :

/tool/platform/lsf/8.0/man:/usr/share/man:/usr/local/share/man

While in Modules 5.5.0, I get this :

/tool/platform/lsf/8.0/man

In that case, a simple « man ls » is returning : « No manual entry for ls » . Too bad !


When looking at the modulecmd.tcl code in 5.5.0, around line number 18266, I see this (I have removed comments to compact the lines) :

      if {{/home/lbesson/Tools/Modules/5.5.0/bin} ni [split [get-env PATH] :]} {
         prepend-path --ignore-refcount PATH {/home/lbesson/Tools/Modules/5.5.0/bin}
      }

      set manpath {}
      catch {set manpath [exec -ignorestderr 2>/dev/null manpath]}
      if {{/home/lbesson/Tools/Modules/5.5.0/share/man} ni [split $manpath :]} {
         if {![isEnvVarDefined MANPATH]} {
            append-path MANPATH {}
         } elseif {[envVarEquals MANPATH :]} {
            remove-path MANPATH {}
            append-path MANPATH {}
         }
         prepend-path MANPATH {/home/lbesson/Tools/Modules/5.5.0/share/man}
      }

There is no usage of $manpath variable, except to check is Modules man page are accessible by « man » command.

I do not have acces to C code of Modules 3.2.0 but I tend to believe it was adding « manpath » value to $MANPATH when loading the first module which is appending/prepending a value to MANPATH

Am I the only one on the Modules planet to face this issue ?
What should be the correct behaviour ?

Thanks for your help,
Laurent.