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boegel edited this page Nov 11, 2012 · 22 revisions

Frequently asked questions:

Installation problems

error: Couldn't find a setup script in easybuild

If you're seeing a problem error: Couldn't find a setup script in easybuild when installing EasyBuild with easy_install, you are most likely running the command in a directory which has a subdirectory named easybuild.

In that case, easy_install is trying to find a setup.py script in the easybuild directory, while you probably want it to go look for EasyBuild on PyPi.

Solution: Run the easy_install command line in a directory which doesn't have a subdirectory named easybuild.

easy_install --prefix ~/testing/easybuild easybuild

Using EasyBuild

Can I build different numpy and scipy versions?

Yes, use the PythonPackageModule to build different version without rebuilding Python.

Can I create module files which just load a set of modules?

Yes, if you create an easyconfig file with no sources and only dependencies. You could ofcourse also just create the module file yourself.

Can I add a dependency on an os specific package (rpm, deb)

Yes, but better if you not, they are not really portable: A better way around is to actually create a .eb file for the dependency without a sources field.

You can add a sanitycheckcommand to check if the package is available (it would be nice if this is distribution independend)

This way

  • a build will fail without the os dependency available.
  • you can later override default tcsh with a custom build one when in need
  • reduce dependencies on OS repositories and distro specific mechanisms
  • actually report problems when there are exact version dependencies (otherwise a default yum/repo update can break a working HPC application).

Easybuild complains about an OS dependency, yet I am certain it is installed

Currently easybuild's support for OS dependencies is lacking. It will try to find it using rpm and dpgk, but this is not perfect. If you know what you are doing, you can remove the OS dependency from the easyconfig file, and then build it.

We are trying to remove as much os dependencies as possible, however we can not (yet) build an entire linux system from scratch.

Developing and contributing

How do I contribute my own easyconfig files?

If you want your own easyconfig files to be included with easybuild, you must fork the easyconfigs repo and send a pull request. Note: pull requests should be send to the develop branch instead of the master branch.

I don't like the a-z/ directory structure, can I change it?

Easybuild tries to be smart about this and will look inside the $PYTHONPATH to find the required files. The a-z/ directory structure is entirely optional, but suggested as it keeps things organized.

Every block inside the easybuild.easyblocks namespace can be used. In our repo we extend the search path in the easybuild.easyblocks namespace (in the __init__.py) to also search in the a-z subdirectories.

If you setup your own repo without these subdirectories, keep in mind to put the original repo first in the Python search path, this way we can still extend the search path first.

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