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Getting started
Getting started with EasyBuild is really easy: just follow these steps and you can start building software with EasyBuild yourself.
The first step consists of configuring EasyBuild: see Configuration.
Once you have EasyBuild configured, you can test your configuration by installing a simple software package.
A good example is the open-source software package gzip.
Follow these steps to build your first software package using EasyBuild:
Download the gzip source tarball from http://www.gzip.org/ to the source path you configured EasyBuild with, in a subdirectory named gzip or g/gzip.
Create a .eb specification file named gzip.eb, with contents as shown below, anywhere on your system (for example, in your home directory):
name = 'gzip'
version = '1.4'
homepage = 'http://www.gnu.org/software/gzip/'
description = "gzip (GNU zip) is a popular data compression program as a replacement for compress"
# dummy toolkit, rely on system C compiler
toolkit = {'name':'dummy','version':'dummy'}
# source tarball filename
sources = ['%s-%s.tar.gz'%(name,version)]
# make sure the gzip and gunzip binaries are available after installation
sanityCheckPaths = { 'files':["bin/gunzip", "bin/gzip"], 'dirs':[] }
Make sure the specified version corresponds with the version of gzip you downloaded in step 2.1.
Note that the specification file is basically just Python code.
Run EasyBuild, and specify the location of the gzip.eb files you created in step 2.2:
<path>/easybuild/easybuild.sh gzip.eb
EasyBuild uses compiler toolkits to build software, which consist a (set of) compiler(s) to build software, and a set of libraries which provide extra functionality (e.g., MPI support, BLAS and/or LAPACK routines, etc.).
In the previous step, a dummy compiler toolkit was used. Therefore, EasyBuild depended on the compilers and libraries provided by the system. For various reasons, this is not the best possible scenario: if system updates are performed (either by you or a system administrator), then compiler and libraries may be upgraded, potentially breaking existing software builds. Also, it yields reproducing of certain software builds with the exact same compiler and library versions very difficult.
Therefore, the first time you use EasyBuild, you should start by constructing your compiler toolkit of preference.
For more details, we refer to the compiler toolkits wiki page.
After putting together your own compiler toolkit, you can try installing gzip using that toolkit.
Note that EasyBuild will install a whole new build of gzip when doing this, without removing or overwriting the previous build using the dummy toolkit.
To build and install gzip using your new toolkit, just adjust the toolkit variable in the gzip.eb specification file, specifying the name and version of your toolkit. For example:
toolkit = {'name':'myToolkit','version':'1.2.3'}
You can now load the module created by EasyBuild to start using gzip built with your own compiler toolkit:
module load gzip/1.4-myToolkit-1.2.3
Congratulations, you've just mastered the basics of EasyBuild!
You can now start using EasyBuild to build your favorite set of software packages.
For a detailed example of setting up a compiler toolkit and using it, see the step-by-step demo.
More advanced topics include: