Previously, we hardcoded a list of Spack versions which could be used by the containerize command.
This PR removes that list. It's a maintenance burden when cutting a release, and prevents older versions of Spack from creating containers to be used by newer versions.
fixes#15183
- Moved the container related content from
workflows.rst into containers.rst
- Deleted the docker_for_developers.rst file,
since it describes an outdated procedure
Co-authored-by: Axel Huebl <a.huebl@hzdr.de>
Co-authored-by: Omar Padron <omar.padron@kitware.com>
Shell integration no longer requires setting `SPACK_ROOT`, so we can
simplify the documentation on it. The docs on shell support and using
packages are getting a bit old, and information on `spack load` (which
seems to be everyone's most common way of using packages) is hard to
find.
This PR simplifies the shell documentation to remove SPACK_ROOT, and also
moves some sections around for clearer organization.
- [x] make docs on sourcing setup scripts clearer and simpler
- [x] introduce `spack load` early in the basic usage guide instead of
burying it in the module docs
- [x] clean up module docs so that spack module tcl loads comes later
- [x] be clear about the different ways to use packages so that the users
can find the docs better.
Co-authored-by: Massimiliano Culpo <massimiliano.culpo@gmail.com>
The package list at https://spack.readthedocs.io/en/latest/package_list.html claims "it is automatically generated based on the packages in the latest Spack release" but it is actually based on the develop branch. This leads to confusion when users find that e.g. herwigpp is included in the list, but it cannot be found when they install the latest release. That latest release has a package list at https://spack.readthedocs.io/en/stable/package_list.html which does indeed not include herwigpp.
Changing the language from "the latest Spack release" to "this Spack version" might make that clearer. Maybe.
Update pipelines documentation to describe how 'tags', 'variables',
'image', 'before_script', 'script', and 'after_script' can be
supplied at the top level, to be used by any of the runner mappings,
and also overridden by any of the runner mappings.
Also show an example of capturing the custom spack SHA at pipeline
generation time, so all jobs are sure to run with the same version
of spack, as a means to illustrate the $env:VARIABLE_NAME syntax.
I know that it's just an example, but I was trying to figure out what was going on and it wasn't making sense....
`tput sgr0` resets the terminal state (http://linuxcommand.org/lc3_adv_tput.php) and I can't see any reason to do it twice. Deleting the second occurrence doesn't seem to break the fancy prompt effect.
Packages can implement “detect_version” to support detection
of external instances of a package. This is generally easier
than implementing “determine_spec_details”. The API for
determine_version is similar: for example you can return
“None” to indicate that an executable is not an instance
of a package.
Users may implement a “determine_variants” method for a package.
When doing external detection, executables are grouped by version
and each group results in a single invocation of “determine_variants”
for the associated spec. The method returns a string specifying
the variants for the package. The method may additionally return
a dictionary representing extra attributes for the package.
These will be stored in the spec yaml and can be retrieved
from self.spec.extra_attributes
The Spack GCC package has been updated with an implementation
of “determine_variants” which adds the following extra
attributes to the package: c, cxx, fortran
The YAML config for paths and modules of external packages has
changed: the new format allows a single spec to load multiple
modules. Spack will automatically convert from the old format
when reading the configs (the updates do not add new essential
properties, so this change in Spack is backwards-compatible).
With this update, Spack cannot modify existing configs/environments
without updating them (e.g. “spack config add” will fail if the
configuration is in a format that predates this PR). The user is
prompted to do this explicitly and commands are provided. All
config scopes can be updated at once. Each environment must be
updated one at a time.
* Run Python2.6 unit tests on Github Actions
* Skip url tests on Python 2.6 to reduce waiting times
* Skip foreground background tests on Python 2.6 to reduce waiting times
* Removed references to Travis in the documentation
* Deleted install_patchelf.sh (can be installed from repo on CentOS 6)
We got rid of `master` after #17377, but users still want a way to get
the latest stable release without knowing its number.
We've added a `releases/latest` tag to replace what was once `master`.
Co-authored-by: Massimiliano Culpo <massimiliano.culpo@gmail.com>
- [x] Remove references to `master` branch
- [x] Document how release branches are structured
- [x] Document how to make a major release
- [x] Document how to make a point release
- [x] Document how to do work in our release projects
[george.hartzell@172-16-193-97 spack-explore-docker]$ spack containerize
Running `spack containerize` with the example `spack.yaml` file fails
with an error that ends like so:
```
[...]
File "/local_scratch/hartzell/tmp/spack-explore-docker/lib/spack/external/ruamel/yaml/scanner.py", line 165, in need_more_tokens
self.stale_possible_simple_keys()
File "/local_scratch/hartzell/tmp/spack-explore-docker/lib/spack/external/ruamel/yaml/scanner.py", line 309, in stale_possible_simple_keys
"could not find expected ':'", self.get_mark())
ruamel.yaml.scanner.ScannerError: while scanning a simple key
in "/local_scratch/hartzell/tmp/spack-explore-docker/spack.yaml", line 26, column 1
could not find expected ':'
in "/local_scratch/hartzell/tmp/spack-explore-docker/spack.yaml", line 28, column 5
```
Indenting the block string fixes the problem for me.
CentOS 7,
```
$ spack --version
0.14.2-1529-ec58f28c2
```
* env: no automatic activation
* Ensure ci rebuild jobs activate the environment (no longer automagic)
Co-authored-by: Scott Wittenburg <scott.wittenburg@kitware.com>
* Separate Apple Clang from LLVM Clang
Apple Clang is a compiler of its own. All places
referring to "-apple" suffix have been updated.
* Hack to use a dash in 'apple-clang'
To be able to use autodoc from Sphinx we need
a valid Python name for the module that contains
Apple's Clang code.
* Updated packages to account for the existence of apple-clang
Co-authored-by: Adam J. Stewart <ajstewart426@gmail.com>
* Added unit test for XCode related functions
Co-authored-by: Gregory Becker <becker33@llnl.gov>
Co-authored-by: Adam J. Stewart <ajstewart426@gmail.com>
This change also adds a code path through the spack ci pipelines
infrastructure which supports PR testing on the Spack repository.
Gitlab pipelines run as a result of a PR (either creation or pushing
to a PR branch) will only verify that the packages in the environment
build without error. When the PR branch is merged to develop,
another pipeline will run which results in the generated binaries
getting pushed to the binary mirror.
Packages built with lmod core_compiler are placed in `Core`.
Other packages may belong in `Core`. For example, python may be built with a proprietary compiler for performance, but belong on the `Core` directory.
With this PR, lmod config can include a `core_specs` list. Any package that satisfies a spec in that list is placed in `Core`, regardless of its compiler or dependencies.
This improves the documentation for `spack external find` in several ways:
* Provide a code example of implementing `determine_spec_details` for a package
* Explain how to define executables to look for (and also e.g. that they are treated as regular expressions and so can pull in unexpected files).
* Add the "why" for a couple of constraints (i.e. explain that this logic only works for build/run deps because it examines `PATH` for executables)
* Spread the docs between build customization and packaging sections
* Add cross-references
* Add a label so that `spack external find` is linked from the command reference.
Add a `spack external find` command that tries to populate
`packages.yaml` with external packages from the user's `$PATH`. This
focuses on finding build dependencies. Currently, support has only been
added for `cmake`.
For a package to be discoverable with `spack external find`, it must define:
* an `executables` class attribute containing a list of
regular expressions that match executable names.
* a `determine_spec_details(prefix, specs_in_prefix)` method
Spack will call `determine_spec_details()` once for each prefix where
executables are found, passing in the path to the prefix and the path to
all found executables. The package is responsible for invoking the
executables and figuring out what type of installation(s) are in the
prefix, and returning one or more specs (each with version, variants or
whatever else the user decides to include in the spec).
The found specs and prefixes will be added to the user's `packages.yaml`
file. Providing the `--not-buildable` option will mark all generated
entries in `packages.yaml` as `buildable: False`
Since #9481 Python's None is not permitted as a value for
MV variants. The string 'none' is used instead.
Add the same fix for the amgx and lammps packages
To specify an environment for a comment, the user can specify
"spack -e <env>". The documentation incorrectly specified "-E" (which
is actually used to ignore any implicit use of environments).
Since #16132, we've consolidated the setting of FORCE_UNSAFE_CONFIGURE to
`autotools.py`, so we don't need to use it in packages like `coreutils`,
in our commands, or in our container recipes.
- [x] Remove FORCE_UNSAFE_CONFIGURE from packages
- [x] Remove FORCE_UNSAFE_CONFIGURE from container recipes
- [x] Remove FORCE_UNSAFE_CONFIGURE from `spack ci` command
* Moved link to the right place in the docs
* Fixed a few minor issues in extensions docs
Fixed a typo, added a subsubsection for better
navigation, reworded "modules in Python" as
"Python packages"
Currently, to force Spack to use an external MPI, you have to specify `buildable: False`
for every MPI provider in Spack in your packages.yaml file. This is both tedious and
fragile, as new MPI providers can be added and break your workflow when you do a
git pull.
This PR allows you to specify an entire virtual dependency as non-buildable, and
specify particular implementations to be built:
```
packages:
all:
providers:
mpi: [mpich]
mpi:
buildable: false
paths:
mpich@3.2 %gcc@7.3.0: /usr/packages/mpich-3.2-gcc-7.3.0
```
will force all Spack builds to use the specified `mpich` install.
* try extend path to solve PyQt5.sip not found issue
* disable private sip installation in sippackage class
* undo manual PyQt5 dir creation in py-sip site-packages dir
* fix typo
* fix typo
* also apply fix to PyQt4
* tidy up
* flake8 and tidy up
* tidy and undo hardcoding of python_include_dir
* replace hardcoded python inc dir
* fix minor issues
* rethink include dir variable name
* improve style
* add new versions
* implement new sip setup to qsci installation
* set sip-incdir correctly for the new setup
* setup extend_path thing before qsci python bindings
* take care of conflict
* flake8
* also extend for PyQt4
* improve style
* improve style
* SipPackage build sys should depend on py-sip
* consolidate extend_path fixes into SipPackage
* fix typo
* fix bugs
* flake8
* revert sip doc to pre-resource setup
* import os module
* flake8
Co-authored-by: Sinan81 <sbulut@3vgeomatics.com>
Add a 'define_from_variant` helper function to CMake-based Spack
packages to convert package variants into CMake arguments. For
example:
args.append('-DFOO=%s' % ('ON' if '+foo' in self.spec else 'OFF'))
can be replaced with:
args.append(self.define_from_variant('foo'))
The following conversions are handled automatically:
* Flag variants will be converted to CMake booleans
* Multivalued variants will be converted to semicolon-separated strings
* Other variant values are converted to CMake string arguments
This also adds a 'define' helper method to convert any variable to
a CMake argument. It has the same conversion rules as
'define_from_variant' (but operates directly on values rather than
requiring the user to supply the name of a package variant).
Add an optional 'submodules_delete' field to Git versions in Spack
packages that allows them to remove specific submodules.
For example: the nervanagpu submodule has become unavailable for the
PyTorch project (see issue 19457 at
https://github.com/pytorch/pytorch/issues/). Removing this submodule
allows 0.4.1 to build.
This PR adds a new command to Spack:
```console
$ spack containerize -h
usage: spack containerize [-h] [--config CONFIG]
creates recipes to build images for different container runtimes
optional arguments:
-h, --help show this help message and exit
--config CONFIG configuration for the container recipe that will be generated
```
which takes an environment with an additional `container` section:
```yaml
spack:
specs:
- gromacs build_type=Release
- mpich
- fftw precision=float
packages:
all:
target: [broadwell]
container:
# Select the format of the recipe e.g. docker,
# singularity or anything else that is currently supported
format: docker
# Select from a valid list of images
base:
image: "ubuntu:18.04"
spack: prerelease
# Additional system packages that are needed at runtime
os_packages:
- libgomp1
```
and turns it into a `Dockerfile` or a Singularity definition file, for instance:
```Dockerfile
# Build stage with Spack pre-installed and ready to be used
FROM spack/ubuntu-bionic:prerelease as builder
# What we want to install and how we want to install it
# is specified in a manifest file (spack.yaml)
RUN mkdir /opt/spack-environment \
&& (echo "spack:" \
&& echo " specs:" \
&& echo " - gromacs build_type=Release" \
&& echo " - mpich" \
&& echo " - fftw precision=float" \
&& echo " packages:" \
&& echo " all:" \
&& echo " target:" \
&& echo " - broadwell" \
&& echo " config:" \
&& echo " install_tree: /opt/software" \
&& echo " concretization: together" \
&& echo " view: /opt/view") > /opt/spack-environment/spack.yaml
# Install the software, remove unecessary deps and strip executables
RUN cd /opt/spack-environment && spack install && spack autoremove -y
RUN find -L /opt/view/* -type f -exec readlink -f '{}' \; | \
xargs file -i | \
grep 'charset=binary' | \
grep 'x-executable\|x-archive\|x-sharedlib' | \
awk -F: '{print $1}' | xargs strip -s
# Modifications to the environment that are necessary to run
RUN cd /opt/spack-environment && \
spack env activate --sh -d . >> /etc/profile.d/z10_spack_environment.sh
# Bare OS image to run the installed executables
FROM ubuntu:18.04
COPY --from=builder /opt/spack-environment /opt/spack-environment
COPY --from=builder /opt/software /opt/software
COPY --from=builder /opt/view /opt/view
COPY --from=builder /etc/profile.d/z10_spack_environment.sh /etc/profile.d/z10_spack_environment.sh
RUN apt-get -yqq update && apt-get -yqq upgrade \
&& apt-get -yqq install libgomp1 \
&& rm -rf /var/lib/apt/lists/*
ENTRYPOINT ["/bin/bash", "--rcfile", "/etc/profile", "-l"]
```
* Unified environment modifications in config files
fixes#13357
This commit factors all the code that is involved in
the validation (schema) and parsing of environment modifications
from configuration files in a single place. The factored out
code is then used for module files and compiler configuration.
Attributes were separated by dashes in `compilers.yaml` files and
by underscores in `modules.yaml` files. This PR unifies the syntax
on attributes separated by underscores.
Unit testing of environment modifications in compilers
has been refactored and simplified.
Previously the `spack load` command was a wrapper around `module load`. This required some bootstrapping of modules to make `spack load` work properly.
With this PR, the `spack` shell function handles the environment modifications necessary to add packages to your user environment. This removes the dependence on environment modules or lmod and removes the requirement to bootstrap spack (beyond using the setup-env scripts).
Included in this PR is support for MacOS when using Apple's System Integrity Protection (SIP), which is enabled by default in modern MacOS versions. SIP clears the `LD_LIBRARY_PATH` and `DYLD_LIBRARY_PATH` variables on process startup for executables that live in `/usr` (but not '/usr/local', `/System`, `/bin`, and `/sbin` among other system locations. Spack cannot know the `LD_LIBRARY_PATH` of the calling process when executed using `/bin/sh` and `/usr/bin/python`. The `spack` shell function now manually forwards these two variables, if they are present, as `SPACK_<VAR>` and recovers those values on startup.
- [x] spack load/unload no longer delegate to modules
- [x] refactor user_environment modification calculations
- [x] update documentation for spack load/unload
Co-authored-by: Todd Gamblin <tgamblin@llnl.gov>
Rework Spack's continuous integration workflow to be environment-based.
- Add the `spack ci` command, which replaces the many scripts in `bin/`
- `spack ci` decouples the CI workflow from the spack instance:
- CI is defined in a spack environment
- environment is in its own (single) git repository, separate from Spack
- spack instance used to run the pipeline is up to the user
- A new `gitlab-ci` section in environments allows users to configure how
specs in the environment should be mapped to runners
- Compilers can be bootstrapped in the new pipeline workflow
- Add extensive documentation on pipelines (see `pipelines.rst` for further details)
- Add extensive tests for pipeline code
* Spack can uninstall unused specs
fixes#4382
Added an option to spack uninstall that removes all unused specs i.e.
build dependencies or transitive dependencies that are left
in the store after the specs that pulled them in have been removed.
* Moved the functionality to its own command
The command has been named 'spack autoremove' to follow the naming used
for the same functionality by other widely known package managers i.e.
yum and apt.
* Speed-up autoremoving specs by not locking and re-reading the scratch DB
* Make autoremove work directly on Spack's store
* Added unit tests for the new command
* Display a terser output to the user
* Renamed the "autoremove" command "gc"
Following discussion there's more consensus around
the latter name.
* Preserve root specs in env contexts
* Instead of preserving specs, restrict gc to the active environment
* Added docs
* Added a unit test for gc within an environment
* Updated copyright to 2020
* Updated documentation according to review
Rephrased a couple of sentences, added references to
`spack find` and dependency types.
* Updated function naming and docstrings
* Simplified computation of unused specs
Since the new approach uses private attributes of the DB
it has been coded as a method of that class rather than a
freestanding function.
Previously, `spack test` automatically passed all of its arguments to
`pytest -k` if no options were provided, and to `pytest` if they were.
`spack test -l` also provided a list of test filenames, but they didn't
really let you completely narrow down which tests you wanted to run.
Instead of trying to do our own weird thing, this passes `spack test`
args directly to `pytest`, and omits the implicit `-k`. This means we
can now run, e.g.:
```console
$ spack test spec_syntax.py::TestSpecSyntax::test_ambiguous
```
This wasn't possible before, because we'd pass the fully qualified name
to `pytest -k` and get an error.
Because `pytest` doesn't have the greatest ability to list tests, I've
tweaked the `-l`/`--list`, `-L`/`--list-long`, and `-N`/`--list-names`
options to `spack test` so that they help you understand the names
better. you can combine these options with `-k` or other arguments to do
pretty powerful searches.
This one makes it easy to get a list of names so you can run tests in
different orders (something I find useful for debugging `pytest` issues):
```console
$ spack test --list-names -k "spec and concretize"
cmd/env.py::test_concretize_user_specs_together
concretize.py::TestConcretize::test_conflicts_in_spec
concretize.py::TestConcretize::test_find_spec_children
concretize.py::TestConcretize::test_find_spec_none
concretize.py::TestConcretize::test_find_spec_parents
concretize.py::TestConcretize::test_find_spec_self
concretize.py::TestConcretize::test_find_spec_sibling
concretize.py::TestConcretize::test_no_matching_compiler_specs
concretize.py::TestConcretize::test_simultaneous_concretization_of_specs
spec_dag.py::TestSpecDag::test_concretize_deptypes
spec_dag.py::TestSpecDag::test_copy_concretized
```
You can combine any list option with keywords:
```console
$ spack test --list -k microarchitecture
llnl/util/cpu.py modules/lmod.py
```
```console
$ spack test --list-long -k microarchitecture
llnl/util/cpu.py::
test_generic_microarchitecture
modules/lmod.py::TestLmod::
test_only_generic_microarchitectures_in_root
```
Or just list specific files:
```console
$ spack test --list-long cmd/test.py
cmd/test.py::
test_list test_list_names_with_pytest_arg
test_list_long test_list_with_keywords
test_list_long_with_pytest_arg test_list_with_pytest_arg
test_list_names
```
Hopefully this stuff will help with debugging test issues.
- [x] make `spack test` send args directly to `pytest` instead of trying
to do fancy things.
- [x] rework `--list`, `--list-long`, and add `--list-names` to make
searching for tests easier.
- [x] make it possible to mix Spack's list args with `pytest` args
(they're just fancy parsing around `pytest --collect-only`)
- [x] add docs
- [x] add tests
- [x] update spack completion
Users can now list mirrors of the main url in packages.
- [x] Instead of just a single `url` attribute, users can provide a list (`urls`) in the package, and these will be tried by in order by the fetch strategy.
- [x] To handle one of the most common mirror cases, define a `GNUMirrorPackage` mixin to handle all the standard GNU mirrors. GNU packages can set `gnu_mirror_path` to define the path within a mirror, and the mixin handles setting up all the requisite GNU mirror URLs.
- [x] update all GNU packages in `builtin` to use the `GNUMirrorPackage` mixin.
I have, more than once, tried to install the list of things that need
to build the docs, only to discover that the list doesn't use Spack's
package names. I'm tired of facepalming....
While I was there I touched up the prose about activating the new
Python packages; activating a python package doesn't add anything to
your PYTHONPATH, it links things into a directory that's *already* on
your PYTHONPATH. Note that this all presupposes that you're using
that same python....
Extensions have been available for a while and the overall design
seems solid enough to be feasible for extensions without losing
backward compatibility.
* Docs update for deprecated `spack sha256`
* Added macOS shasum
* Update lib/spack/docs/packaging_guide.rst
Co-Authored-By: Adam J. Stewart <ajstewart426@gmail.com>
- [x] Use higher contrast terminal output font
- [x] Use higher contrast code block background color than default
- [x] Use a noticeable prompt character
See also https://github.com/spack/spack-tutorial/pull/10.
* Travis CI: Test Python 3.8
* Fix use of deprecated cgi.escape method
* Fix version comparison
* Fix flake8 F811 change in Python 3.8
* Make flake8 happy
* Use Python 3.8 for all test categories
* docs: add a spack environment for building the docs
* docs: remove tutorial and link to spack-tutorial.readthedocs.io
The tutorial now has its own standalone website, versioned by instances
of the tutorial. Link to that instead of versioning it directly with Spack.
Add a new entry in `config.yaml`:
config:
shared_linking: 'rpath'
If this variable is set to `rpath` (the default) Spack will set RPATH in ELF binaries. If set to `runpath` it will set RUNPATH.
Details:
* Spack cc wrapper explicitly adds `--disable-new-dtags` when linking
* cc wrapper also strips `--enable-new-dtags` from the compile line
when disabling (and vice versa)
* We specifically do *not* add any dtags flags on macOS, which uses
Mach-O binaries, not ELF, so there's no RUNPATH)
`spack deprecate` allows for the removal of insecure packages with minimal impact to their dependents. It allows one package to be symlinked into the prefix of another to provide seamless transition for rpath'd and hard-coded applications using the old version.
Example usage:
spack deprecate /hash-of-old-openssl /hash-of-new-openssl
The spack deprecate command is designed for use only in extroardinary circumstances. The spack deprecate command makes no promises about binary compatibility. It is up to the user to ensure the replacement is suitable for the deprecated package.
* Methods setting the environment now do it separately for build and run
Before this commit the `*_environment` methods were setting
modifications to both the build-time and run-time environment
simultaneously. This might cause issues as the two environments
inherently rely on different preconditions:
1. The build-time environment is set before building a package, thus
the package prefix doesn't exist and can't be inspected
2. The run-time environment instead is set assuming the target package
has been already installed
Here we split each of these functions into two: one setting the
build-time environment, one the run-time.
We also adopt a fallback strategy that inspects for old methods and
executes them as before, but prints a deprecation warning to tty. This
permits to port packages to use the new methods in a distributed way,
rather than having to modify all the packages at once.
* Added a test that fails if any package uses the old API
Marked the test xfail for now as we have a lot of packages in that
state.
* Added a test to check that a package modified by a PR is up to date
This test can be used any time we deprecate a method call to ensure
that during the first modification of the package we update also
the deprecated calls.
* Updated documentation
* This updates stage names to use "spack-stage-" as a prefix.
This avoids removing non-Spack directories in "spack clean" as
c141e99 did (in this case so long as they don't contain the
prefix "spack-stage-"), and also addresses a follow-up issue
where Spack stage directories were not removed.
* Spack now does more-stringent checking of expected permissions for
staging directories. For a given stage root that includes a user
component, all directories before the user component that are
created by Spack are expected to match the permissions of their
parent; the user component and all deeper directories are expected
to be accessible to the user (read/write/execute).
This feature generates a verification manifest for each installed
package and provides a command, "spack verify", which can be used to
compare the current file checksums/permissions with those calculated
at installed time.
Verification includes
* Checksums of files
* File permissions
* Modification time
* File size
Packages installed before this PR will be skipped during verification.
To verify such a package you must reinstall it.
The spack verify command has three modes.
* With the -a,--all option it will check every installed package.
* With the -f,--files option, it will check some specific files,
determine which package they belong to, and confirm that they have
not been changed.
* With the -s,--specs option or by default, it will check some
specific packages that no files havae changed.
This PR adds a 'concretize' entry to an environment's spec.yaml file
which controls how user specs are concretized. By default it is
set to 'separately' which means that each spec added by the user is
concretized separately (the behavior of environments before this PR).
If set to 'together', the environment will concretize all of the
added user specs together; this means that all specs and their
dependencies will be consistent with each other (for example, a
user could develop code linked against the set of libraries in the
environment without conflicts).
If the environment was previously concretized, this will re-concretize
all specs, in which case previously-installed specs may no longer be
used by the environment (in this sense, adding a new spec to an
environment with 'concretize: together' can be significantly more
expensive).
The 'concretize: together' setting is not compatible with Spec
matrices; this PR adds a check to look for multiple instances of the
same package added to the environment and fails early when
'concretize: together' is set (to avoid confusing messages about
conflicts later on).
While the build environment already takes share/pkgconfig into account,
the generated module files etc. only consider lib/pkgconfig and
lib64/pkgconfig.
Dotkit is being used only at a few sites and has been deprecated on new
machines. This commit removes all the code that provide support for the
generation of dotkit module files.
A new validator named "deprecatedProperties" has been added to the
jsonschema validators. It permits to prompt a warning message or exit
with an error if a property that has been marked as deprecated is
encountered.
* Removed references to dotkit in the docs
* Removed references to dotkit in setup-env-test.sh
* Added a unit test for the 'deprecatedProperties' schema validator
Preferred targets were failing because we were looking them up by
Microarchitecture object, not by string.
- [x] Add a call to `str()` to fix target lookup.
- [x] Add a test to exercise this part of concretization.
- [x] Add documentation for setting `target` in `packages.yaml`
Seamless translation from 'target=<generic>' to either
- target.family == <generic> (in methods)
- 'target=<generic>:' (in directives)
Also updated docs to show ranges in directives.
Spack can now:
- label ppc64, ppc64le, x86_64, etc. builds with specific
microarchitecture-specific names, like 'haswell', 'skylake' or
'icelake'.
- detect the host architecture of a machine from /proc/cpuinfo or similar
tools.
- Understand which microarchitectures are compatible with which (for
binary reuse)
- Understand which compiler flags are needed (for GCC, so far) to build
binaries for particular microarchitectures.
All of this is managed through a JSON file (microarchitectures.json) that
contains detailed auto-detection, compiler flag, and compatibility
information for specific microarchitecture targets. The `llnl.util.cpu`
module implements a library that allows detection and comparison of
microarchitectures based on the data in this file.
The `target` part of Spack specs is now essentially a Microarchitecture
object, and Specs' targets can be compared for compatibility as well.
This allows us to label optimized binary packages at a granularity that
enables them to be reused on compatible machines. Previously, we only
knew that a package was built for x86_64, NOT which x86_64 machines it
was usable on.
Currently this feature supports Intel, Power, and AMD chips. Support for
ARM is forthcoming.
Specifics:
- Add microarchitectures.json with descriptions of architectures
- Relaxed semantic of compiler's "target" attribute. Before this change
the semantic to check if a compiler could be viable for a given target
was exact match. This made sense as the finest granularity of targets
was architecture families. As now we can target micro-architectures,
this commit changes the semantic by interpreting as the architecture
family what is stored in the compiler's "target" attribute. A compiler
is then a viable choice if the target being concretized belongs to the
same family. Similarly when a new compiler is detected the architecture
family is stored in the "target" attribute.
- Make Spack's `cc` compiler wrapper inject target-specific flags on the
command line
- Architecture concretization updated to use the same algorithm as
compiler concretization
- Micro-architecture features, vendor, generation etc. are included in
the package hash. Generic architectures, such as x86_64 or ppc64, are
still dumped using the name only.
- If the compiler for a target is not supported exit with an intelligible
error message. If the compiler support is unknown don't try to use
optimization flags.
- Support and define feature aliases (e.g., sse3 -> ssse3) in
microarchitectures.json and on Microarchitecture objects. Feature
aliases are defined in targets.json and map a name (the "alias") to a
list of rules that must be met for the test to be successful. The rules
that are available can be extended later using a decorator.
- Implement subset semantics for comparing microarchitectures (treat
microarchitectures as a partial order, i.e. (a < b), (a == b) and (b <
a) can all be false.
- Implement logic to automatically demote the default target if the
compiler being used is too old to optimize for it. Updated docs to make
this behavior explicit. This avoids surprising the user if the default
compiler is older than the host architecture.
This commit adds unit tests to verify the semantics of target ranges and
target lists in constraints. The implementation to allow target ranges
and lists is minimal and doesn't add any new type. A more careful
refactor that takes into account the type system might be due later.
Co-authored-by: Gregory Becker <becker33.llnl.gov>
* When cleaning the stage root, only remove directories that appear
to be used for staging Spack packages. Previously Spack was clearing
all directories in the stage root, which could remove content not
related to Spack if the user chose a staging root which contains
files/directories not managed by Spack.
* The documentation is updated with warnings about choosing a stage
directory that is only managed by Spack (although generally the
check added in this PR for "spack clean" should avoid removing
content that was not created by Spack)
* The default stage directory (in config.yaml) is now
$tempdir/$user/spack-stage and the logic is updated to omit the
$user portion of this path if $tempdir already contains a $user
directory.
* When creating stage root assign user read/write permissions to all
directories in the path under $user. Previously Spack was assigning
the permissions of the first existing parent directory
* All fetch strategies now accept the Boolean version keyword option `no_cache` in order to allow per-version control of cache-ability.
* New git-specific version keyword option `get_full_repo` (Boolean). When true, disables the default `--depth 1` and `--single-branch` optimizations that are applied if supported by the git version and (in the former case) transport protocol.
* The try / catch blog attempting `--depth 1` and retrying on failure has been removed in favor of more accurately ascertaining when the `--depth` option should work based on git version and protocol choice. Any failure is now treated as a real problem, and the clone is only attempted once.
* Test improvements:
* `mock_git_repository.checks[type_of_test].args['git']` is now specified as the URL (with leading `file://`) in order to avoid complaints when using `--depth`.
* New type_of_test `tag-branch`.
* mock_git_repository now provides `git_exe`.
* Improved the action of the `git_version` fixture, which was previously hard-wired.
* New tests of `--single-branch` and `--depth 1` behavior.
* Add documentation of new options to the packaging guide.
Fixes#11163
The goal of this work is to simplify stage directory structures by eliminating use of symbolic links. This means, among other things, that` $spack/var/spack/stage` will no longer be the core staging directory. Instead, the first accessible `config:build_stage` path will be used.
Spack will no longer automatically append `spack-stage` (or the like) to configured build stage directories so the onus of distinguishing the directory from other work -- so the other work is not automatically removed with a `spack clean` operation -- falls on the user.
It's no longer possible to set compiler flags under as an entry under
"paths" in compilers.yaml; instead the user must list these under the
"flags" section. This updates the docs accordingly.
Using "compilers" with the "s" is an invalid config section and throws an error.
Traceback (most recent call last):
File "spack/bin/spack", line 48, in <module>
sys.exit(spack.main.main())
File "/home/omsai/src/libkmap/spack/lib/spack/spack/main.py", line 633, in main
env = ev.find_environment(args)
File "/home/omsai/src/libkmap/spack/lib/spack/spack/environment.py", line 263, in find_environment
return Environment(env)
File "/home/omsai/src/libkmap/spack/lib/spack/spack/environment.py", line 534, in __init__
self._read_manifest(f)
File "/home/omsai/src/libkmap/spack/lib/spack/spack/environment.py", line 561, in _read_manifest
self.yaml = _read_yaml(f)
File "/home/omsai/src/libkmap/spack/lib/spack/spack/environment.py", line 402, in _read_yaml
validate(data, filename)
File "/home/omsai/src/libkmap/spack/lib/spack/spack/environment.py", line 395, in validate
e, data, filename, e.instance.lc.line + 1)
spack.config.ConfigFormatError: /home/omsai/src/libkmap/spack.yaml:15: Additional properties are not allowed ('compilers' was unexpected)
Fixes#11781
* Rename build log to spack-build-log.txt
* Rename environment variables file to spack-build-env.txt
* The name of the log and env files is now the same during the build
and after the build completes
* Update packages which referred to the build log/env files
* For packages installed before this commit using older names for the
build and env files, search for the older names
Add an example of a 'modules:' entry for an external package in
packages.yaml. The 'External Packages' section of 'Build
Customization' mentions 'paths:' and 'modules:' and gives an
example of paths, but not modules.
* config:build_jobs now controls the number of parallel jobs to spawn during
builds, but cannot ever exceed the number of cores on the machine.
* The default is set to 16 or the number of available cores, whatever
is lowest.
* Updated docs to reflect the changes done to limit parallel builds
- `gettext_uuid=True` makes every commit update every .pot file in spack/localized-docs,
and speeds up the internationalized doc build slightly.
- Optimize for less repository churn, and use `python-levenshtein` to accelerate
the build instead.
- make all Spack paths relative to a `_spack_root` symlink, so that we
can easily relocate the docs build *outside* lib/spack/docs
- set some useful defaults for gettext translation variables in conf.py
- update `relativeinclude` and other references to the spack root in the
RST files to use _spack_root
- Add a `--update FILE` option to `spack list`
- Output is written to the file only if any package is newer than the file
- Simplify the code in docs/conf.py using this new option
The Spack documentation currently hard-codes some functionality in
`conf.py`, which makes the doc build less "pluggable" for things like
localized doc builds.
In particular, we unconditionally generate an index of commands and a
package list as part of the docs, but those should really only be done if
things are not up to date.
This commit does the following:
- Add `--header` option to `spack commands` so that it can do the work of
prepending text to its output.
- Add `--update FILE` option to `spack commands` that makes it generate a
new command index *only* if FILE is out of date w.r.t. commands in the
Spack source.
- Simplify code in `conf.py` to use these options and only update the
command index when needed.
#8612 added command extensions to Spack: a command implemented in a
separate directory. This improves the implementation by allowing
the command to import additional utility code stored within the
established directory structure for commands.
This also:
* Adds tests for command extensions
* Documents command extensions (including the expected directory
layout)
* extend Version class so that 2.0 > 1.develop > 1.1
* add concretization tests, with preferences and preferred version.
* add master, head, trunk as develop-like versions, develop > master > head > trunk
* update documentation on version comparison
#11152 added documentation for #8772 but some details were based on
an earlier implementation that had changed by the time #8772 was
merged. In particular, #11152 mentioned that upstream Spack instances
were configured in config.yaml, when in fact they should be placed in
a separate upstreams.yaml config file; this PR updates the
documentation accordingly.
* Update spec format to simpler syntax, maintain backwards compatibility
* Switch to new spec.format method throughout internals
* update package files for new format strings
* documentation and minor code cleanup. removed nonsensical variant sigils
- add CombinatorialSpecSet in spack.util.spec_set module.
- class is iterable and encaspulated YAML parsing and validation.
- Adjust YAML format to be more generic
- YAML spec-set format now has a `matrix` section, which can contain
multiple lists of specs, generated different ways. Including:
- specs: a raw list of specs.
- packages: a list of package names and versions
- compilers: a list of compiler names and versions
- All of the elements of `matrix` are dimensions for the build matrix;
we take the cartesian product of these lists of specs to generate a
build matrix. This means we can add things like [^mpich, ^openmpi]
to get builds with different MPI versions. It also means we can
multiply the build matrix out with lots of different parameters.
- Add a schema format for spec-sets
* Note that `none` is the default for lmod autoload
Save a bit of confusion by *explicitly* pointing out that `none` is
the default value for autoload in the lmod module file generator.
* Add a tip re building software externally
Add a tip about using `autoload: all` when building packages outside
of the tree that use artifacts (e.g. libraries, includes) within the
tree.
Allow customizing views with Spec-formatted directory structure
Allow views to specify projections that are more complicated than
merging every package into a single shared prefix. This will allow
sites to configure a view for the way they want to present packages
to their users; for example this can be used to create a prefix for
each package but omit the DAG hash from the path.
This includes a new YAML format file for specifying the simplified
prefix for a spec in a view. This configuration allows the use of
different prefix formats for different specs (i.e. specs depending
on MPI can include the MPI implementation in the prefix).
Documentation on usage of the view projection configuration is
included.
Depending on the projection configuration, paths are not guaranteed
to be unique and it may not be possible to add multiple installs of
a package to a view.
This enforces conventions that allow for correct handling of
multi-valued variants where specifying no value is an option,
and adds convenience functionality for specifying multi-valued
variants with conflicting sets of values. This also adds a notion
of "feature values" for variants, which are those that are understood
by the build system (e.g. those that would appear as configure
options). In more detail:
* Add documentation on variants to the packaging guide
* Forbid usage of '' or None as a possible variant value, in
particular as a default. To indicate choosing no value, the user
must explicitly define an option like 'none'. Without this,
multi-valued variants with default set to None were not parsable
from the command line (Fixes#6314)
* Add "disjoint_sets" function to support the declaration of
multi-valued variants with conflicting sets of options. For example
a variant "foo" with possible values "a", "b", and "c" where "c"
is exclusive of the other values ("foo=a,b" and "foo=c" are
valid but "foo=a,c" is not).
* Add "any_combination_of" function to support the declaration of
multi-valued variants where it is valid to choose none of the
values. This automatically defines "none" as an option (exclusive
with all other choices); this value does not appear when iterating
over the variant's values, for example in "with_or_without" (which
constructs autotools option strings from variant values).
* The "disjoint_sets" and "any_combination_of" methods return an
object which tracks the possible values. It is also possible to
indicate that some of these values do not correspond to options
understood by the package's build system, such that methods like
"with_or_without" will not define options for those values (this
occurs automatically for "none")
* Add documentation for usage of new functions for specifying
multi-valued variants
- currently just looks at patches
- allows you to find out which package applied a patch to a spec
- intended to work with tarballs and resources in the future.
- add tab completion for `spack resource` and subcommands
* Remove /nfs/tmp2 from default configuration
* /nfs/tmp2 is going away from LC... and doesn’t exist for the rest of the world.
* update documentation to remove /nfs/tmp2 as well
* "spack install" now uses cache by default, update examples accordingly
* Replace some example packages with others
* Packing tutorial reference to "spack env" replaced with "spack build-env"
* Command line prompts in examples are shortened
* Example output (including paths) are updated to be more relevant to training environment
Update all examples that need an MPI provider to build with MPICH; reorganize so that fixing MPICH (as part of environment section) comes first in the tutorial (most examples in the tutorial use an MPI provider).
* Update Makefile to use property methods ("build_targets"/"install_targets")
to demonstrate their usage
* Fix highlighting
* Change cbench example to ESMF:
CBench package file was changed and no longer uses the example shown in
the old docs
Scopes added with -C are now referred to as "custom scopes"
rather than "command line scopes". "command line scope" now refers
to specific config options that are set on the command line (like
"--insecure")
- `spack.util.environment` is the new home for routines that modify
environment variables.
- This is to make room for `spack.environment` to contain new routines
for dealing with spack environments
* modified tutorial packages
* update hint in hdf5 tutorial file (typo for suggested argument)
* add repo.yaml to tutorial repository
* update tutorial docs to refer user to tutorial package repository
* flake edits
* recommend site scope vs. defaults
* you don't specify the repo's name when adding a repo, just the path
* Unite Dockerfiles - add build/run/push scripts
* update docker documentation
* update .travis.yml
* switch to using a preprocessor on Dockerfiles
* skip building docker images on pull requests
* update files with copyright info
* tweak when travis builds for docker files are done
- remove the old LGPL license headers from all files in Spack
- add SPDX headers to all files
- core and most packages are (Apache-2.0 OR MIT)
- a very small number of remaining packages are LGPL-2.1-only
compilers.yaml can track a module that is needed for a compiler, but
Spack does not fill this in automatically. This adds a note to the
documentation informing the user how to do this.
Spack can now be configured to assign permissions to the files installed by a package.
In the `packages.yaml` file under `permissions`, the attributes `read`, `write`, and `group` control the package permissions. These attributes can be set per-package, or for all packages under `all`. If permissions are set under `all` and for a specific package, the package-specific settings take precedence. The `read` and `write` attributes take one of `user`, `group`, and `world`.
packages:
all:
permissions:
write: group
group: spack
my_app:
permissions:
read: group
group: my_team
* Push default flag handlers into module scope
* Preserve backwards compatibility of builtin flag handler names
Ensure Spack continues to work for packages using the `Package.env_flags` idiom and equivalent.
* update docs and tests to match
* Update packages to match new syntax
Consolidate prefix calculation logic for intel packages into the
IntelPackage class.
Add documentation on installing Intel packages with Spack an
(alternatively) adding them as external packages in Spack.
- Support for Python 3.3 isn't really needed, as nothing uses it as the
default system Python, and nearly everyone will have a newer Python 3
version installed.
* Branch with the meson build-system
* Fix build_environment for dual loads and add create code
* Add documentation
* Fixed option list
* Update build_system_guess for meson
* Fixed documentation errors
* Added meson to build and configure and updated documentation
* fix typos
As requested in the review all the commands meant to manage module
files have been grouped under the `spack module` command.
Unit tests have been refactored to match the new command structure.
fixes#4400
The feature requested in #4400 was already part of the module file
configuration, but it was neither tested nor documented. This
commit takes care of adding a few lines in the documentation and a
regression test.
'spack module' has been split into multiple commands, each one tied to a
specific module type. This permits the specialization of the new
commands with features that are module type specific (e.g. set the
default module file in lmod when multiple versions of the same package
are installed at the same time).
Spack provides a number of classes based on commonly-used build systems
that users can extend when writing packages; the classes provide functionality
to perform the actions relevant to the build system (e.g. running "configure" for
an Autotools-based package). This adds documentation for classes supporting the
following build systems:
* Makefile
* Autotools
* CMake
* QMake
* SCons
* Waf
This includes build systems for managing extensions of the following packages:
* Perl
* Python
* R
* Octave
This also adds documentation on implementing packages that use a custom build
system (e.g. Perl/CMake).
Spack also provides extendable classes which aggregate functionality for related
sets of packages, e.g. those using CUDA. Documentation is added for
CudaPackage.
If the user sets "ccache: true" in spack's config.yaml, Spack will use an available
ccache executable when compiling c/c++ code. This feature is disabled by default
(i.e. "ccache: false") and the documentation is updated with how to enable
ccache support
Functional updates:
- `python` now creates a copy of the `python` binaries when it is added
to a view
- Python extensions (packages which subclass `PythonPackage`) rewrite
their shebang lines to refer to python in the view
- Python packages in the same namespace will not generate conflicts if
both have `...lib/site-packages/namespace-example/__init__.py`
- These `__init__` files will also remain when removing any package in
the namespace until the last package in the namespace is removed
Generally (Updated 2/16):
- Any package can define `add_files_to_view` to customize how it is added
to a view (and at the moment custom definitions are included for
`python` and `PythonPackage`)
- Likewise any package can define `remove_files_from_view` to customize
which files are removed (e.g. you don't always want to remove the
namespace `__init__`)
- Any package can define `view_file_conflicts` to customize what it
considers a merge conflict
- Global activations are handled like views (where the view root is the
spec prefix of the extendee)
- Benefit: filesystem-management aspects of activating extensions are
now placed in views (e.g. now one can hardlink a global activation)
- Benefit: overriding `Package.activate` is more straightforward (see
`Python.activate`)
- Complication: extension packages which have special-purpose logic
*only* when activated outside of the extendee prefix must check for
this in their `add_files_to_view` method (see `PythonPackage`)
- `LinkTree` is refactored to have separate methods for copying a
directory structure and for copying files (since it was found that
generally packages may want to alter how files are copied but still
wanted to copy directories in the same way)
TODOs (updated 2/20):
- [x] additional testing (there is some unit testing added at this point
but more would be useful)
- [x] refactor or reorganize `LinkTree` methods: currently there is a
separate set of methods for replicating just the directory structure
without the files, and a set for replicating everything
- [x] Right now external views (i.e. those not used for global
activations) call `view.add_extension`, but global activations do not
to avoid some extra work that goes into maintaining external views. I'm
not sure if addressing that needs to be done here but I'd like to
clarify it in the comments (UPDATE: for now I have added a TODO and in
my opinion this can be merged now and the refactor handled later)
- [x] Several method descriptions (e.g. for `Package.activate`) are out
of date and reference a distinction between global activations and
views, they need to be updated
- [x] Update aspell package activations
The following improvements are made to cxx standard support
(e.g. compiler.cxxNN_flag functions) in compilers:
* Add cxx98_flag property
* Add support for throwing an exception when a flag is not supported (previously
if a flag was not supported the application was terminated with tty.die)
* The name of the flag associated with e.g. c++14 standard support changes for
different compiler versions (e.g. c++1y vs c++14). This makes a few corrections
on what flag to return for which version.
* Added tests to confirm that versions report expected flags for various c++
standards (or raise an exception for versions that don't provide a given cxx
standard)
Note that if a given cxx standard is the default, the associated flag property will
return ""; cxx98 is assumed to be the default standard so this is the behavior for
the associated property in the base compiler class.
Package changes:
* Improvements to the boost spec to take advantage of the improved standard
flag facility.
* Update the clingo spec to catch the new exception rather than look for an
empty flag to indicate non-support (which is not part of the compiler flag API)
* extend Prefix class with join() member to support dynamic directories
* add more tests for Prefix.join()
* more tests for Prefix.join()
* add docstring
* add example to docstring of Prefix class
* cleanup Prefix.join() tests
* use Prefix.join() in Packaging Guide
- Spack packages were originally expected to call `from spack import *`
themselves, but it has become difficult to manage imports in the
Spack core.
- the top-level namespace polluted by package symbols, and it's not
possible to avoid circular dependencies and unnecessary module loads in
the core, given all the stuff the packages need.
- This makes the top-level `spack` package essentially empty, save for a
version tuple and a version string, and `from spack import *` is now
essentially a no-op.
- The common routines and directives that packages need are now in
`spack.pkgkit`, and the import system forces packages to automatically
include this so that old packages that call `from spack import *`
will continue to work without modification.
- Since `from spack import *` is no longer required, we could consider
removing ``from spack import *`` from packages in the future and
shifting to ``from spack.pkgkit import *``, but we can wait a while to
do this.
- spack.util.lock behaves the same as llnl.util.lock, but Lock._lock and
Lock._unlock do nothing.
- can be disabled with a control variable.
- configuration options can enable/disable locking:
- `locks` option in spack configuration controls whether Spack will use filesystem locks or not.
- `-l` and `-L` command-line options can force-disable or force-enable locking.
- Spack will check for group- and world-writability before disabling
locks, and it will not allow a group- or world-writable instance to
have locks disabled.
- update documentation
- `spack.cmd.all_commands` does a directory listing on
`lib/spack/spack/cmd`, regardless of whether it is needed
- make this lazy so that the directory listing won't happen unless it's
necessary.
- spack.repository module is now spack.repo
- `spack.repo` is now `spack.repo.path()` and loaded lazily
- Added `spack.repo.get()` and `spack.repo.all_package_names()` as
convenience functions to simplify the new lazy interface.
- updated tests and code
- no longer require `spack_version` to be a Version (it isn't used that
way anyway)
- use a simple tuple `spack_version_info` with major, minor, patch
versions
- generate `spack_version` from the tuple
- command reference now includes usage for all Spack commands as output
by `spack help`. Each command usage links to any related section in
the docs.
- added `spack commands` command which can list command names,
subcommands, and generate RST docs for commands.
- added `llnl.util.argparsewriter`, which analyzes an argparse parser and
calls hooks for description, usage, options, and subcommands
This reorganizes most sections and rewords a significant portion of
the content (including all introductions) but keeps all the examples.
* Remove section 'What happens at subscript time' from tutorial:
it is too detailed for a tutorial
* Move the 'Extra query parameters' and 'Attach attributes to other
packages' sections into a separate grouping 'Other packaging topics'
* move the 'Set variables at build time yourself' section after
'Set environment variables in dependents' section since the latter
is more motivating
* start the 'set environment variables at build-time for yourself'
section with qt as an example
* renamed section 'specs build interface' to 'retrieving library
information' and updated section introduction
* renamed section 'a motivating example' to 'accessing library
dependencies'; split out the material which deals with implementing
.libs for netlib-lapack into a separate section called 'providing
libraries to dependents'. consolidated in material from the section
'single package providing multiple virtual specs' since
netlib-lapack is an example of this (this removes the material
about intel-parallel studio)
- Generating the HTML from for >2300 packages from RST in Sphinx seems to
take forever.
- Add an option to `spack list` to generate straight HTML instead.
- This reduces the doc build time to about a minute (from 5 minutes on a mac laptop).
* add OctavePackage
1. remove import CudaPackage which is not needed anymore
2. mention CudaPackage and OctavePackage in packaging guide
3. adjust OctavePackageTemplate
4. add clue file for Octave build
5. sanity check on self.prefix
* use setup_environment
This adds the ability for packages to apply compiler flags in one of
three ways: by injecting them into the compiler wrapper calls (the
default in this PR and previously the only automated choice);
exporting environment variable definitions for variables with
corresponding names (e.g. CPPFLAGS=...); providing them as arguments
to the build system (e.g. configure).
When applying compiler flags using build system arguments, a package
must implement the 'flags_to_build_system_args" function. This is
provided for CMake and autotools packages, so for packages which
subclass those build systems, they need only update their flag
handler method specify which compiler flags should be specified as
arguments to the build system.
Convenience methods are provided to specify that all flags be applied
in one of the 3 available ways, so a custom implementation is only
required if more than one method of applying compiler flags is
needed.
This also removes redundant build system definitions from tutorial
examples
Fixes#2440
The "Getting started" guide should be short and sweet. This commit
simplifies the "Environment-Modules" section pruning:
- outdated / wrong suggestions as noted in #2440
- uncommon setups that are better treated in a reference guide
