INSTALL

Installation
============

PyModules is simple collection of python scripts that can be installed in
almost any directory.

The only prerequisite is the `argparse` module, which is included by default
in Python >=2.7, but will need to be installed in older versions of Python. We
have only tested PyModules with Python 2.6 and 2.7.

To install, copy the `*.py` files from this directory to some directory, for
instance `/opt/pymodules`::

    cp *.py /opt/pymodules

Then edit the `modulecfg.py` file to set the root directory where you will
install all software packages, maybe `/opt/packages`::

    rootdir = '/opt/packages'

Finally, the `modules` command must be initialized in the users' shell when
they login. The file `init/modules.sh` performs this initialization, and
can be copied to a central location like `/etc/profile.d` so that it loads
for all users. We copy it to `/etc/profile.d/zz-modules.sh` so that it will
be loaded alphabetically after all other init files. This way, PyModules will
be the last to modify environment variables like `PATH`.

After copying the init file, edit its first lines to set the absolute path to
your Python interpreter, as well as the path to where you installed the `*.py`
files and the directory where you will keep the INI-style module configuration
files (modulefiles)::

    export MODULEHOME=/opt/pymodules
    export MODULEPATH=/opt/pymodules/modulefiles
    export MODULESHELL=bash
    export MODULEPYTHON=/usr/bin/python

Currently, we only support the `bash` shell, but in principle PyModules could
be extended to support `csh` or `zsh`. This is a low development priority for
us, however.

The SQLite database will automatically be created in `MODULEPATH` in a file
called `.db.sqlite` the first time you call `moduledb` to insert a
modulefile.