EasyBuild – LUMI’s primary software installation tool introduced

LUMI was part of the 7th EasyBuild User Meeting, arranged online on 24-28 January 2022.

LUMI User Support team member Kurt Lust (University of Antwerp, Belgium) gave the opening presentation at the 7th EasyBuild User Meeting. EasyBuild is a software build and installation framework for optimized installations of scientific software, and is the primary software installation tool on LUMI. It is currently developed by an international community, but its development was initiated in LUMI consortium country Belgium.

The presentation showed how Lmod modules and EasyBuild are used to provide extensible software stacks on LUMI. With just a few commands users can set up a project-specific or personal software environment from a library of package install recipes developed by the LUMI User Support Team and others.

Local support organizations can support their users by offering additional package install recipes that build on the work already done by the LUMI User Support team, and can contribute those to the wider LUMI community. Scientific communities can build their own recipe library to create an environment fully tuned to their needs.

– EasyBuild is a perfect fit for LUMI. It is in use in many HPC centers in the LUMI consortium, so we can rely on a lot of expertise. By contributing to its development, we also help strengthening the European HPC software ecosystem. It is a perfect tool to describe a software installation in a concise, accurate and reproducible way, which is important when publishing research results. This also makes it a good fit to share customised installation instructions between support organizations, users and scientific communities. I recommend LUMI’s users to have a look at the presentation to learn how we use EasyBuild for the scientific software stack on LUMI, and to see how easy it is to create a custom environment that blends seamlessly into the LUMI setup, said Kurt Lust.

Have a look at Lust’s presentation below.

Image: Fade Creative