A spack wrapper to provide single command to handle user and project installations

[dipietrantonio]

Instead of having two executables, spack and spack_project.sh, we should have a single spack command with a project subcommand to handle project installations. The proposed solution provides a cleaner interface to users.

[dipietrantonio]

This PR partially addresses #174

[marcodelapierre]

I am not sure about the proposal:

I am assuming that most Spack usage is a user-only one, rather than project one; for this reason, I think it can be beneficial to retain the standard, more concise spack syntax for such common usage, and resort to a different, more wordy syntax for the project case. This was indeed the rationale behind my original design.

This being said, I think it is super beneficial to discuss this aspect.

@dipietrantonio @pelahi @ddeeptimahanti

[dipietrantonio]

I think it can be beneficial to retain the standard, more concise spack syntax for such common usage,

And that is what happens. Users can execute spack as usual for their user installations.

spack spec -I cfitsio
spack install -j 128 cfitsio

the above is supported by the script. It offers the same interface.

When users want to install something systemwide, then they use the project spack command that this script introduces. There is no project command in Spack so there is no overlap.

Users can do

spack project spec -I cfitsio
spack project install cfitsio

The script replaces the project subcommand with -C <path to config files>

[marcodelapierre]

Thanks for clarifying - I love this solution!

[marcodelapierre]

Awesome!

[ddeeptimahanti]

Nice solution @dipietrantonio - need to update the relevant documentation

[dipietrantonio]

Thanks @ddeeptimahanti ! Yes I will.