Software overview

Discovery offers you many options for working with software. Two of the easiest and most convenient ways are using the module command on the command line and using the interactive apps on Open onDemand (OOD), Discovery’s web portal. If you need a specific software package, first check to see if it is already available through one of the preinstalled modules on Discovery. The Research Computing team adds new modules regularly, so use the module avail command to view the most up to date list. You can also try using Spack, a software package manager available on Discovery. Spack has over 5000 packages that you can install.

See Using Module for more information about working with module.

See Using OOD’s Interactive Apps for more information about OOD.

See Using Spack for more information about Spack.

You can also use Conda, Miniconda, and Anaconda to manage software packages. See Working with Conda/Miniconda/Anaconda for more information.

Using Make

If you want to use make to add software locally to you path you must first download the software package from its source (such as a webpage or Github), and you need to unpack it or unzip it, if it is archived/zipped. Then, you must set the installation path to a directory where you have write access on Discovery, such as your home directory. You can use ./configure to do this, such as ./configure --prefix=/home/<yourusername>/software After you have set the install path, you need to compile the code using make and then install the software using make install.

Requesting Software Installation Assistance

If the software that you need is not a module on Discovery, cannot be installed through Spack, or is not available through another way of self-installation (such as using make), you can submit a ServiceNow software request ticket. Be aware that there might be packages that cannot be installed on Discovery due to incompatibility with the hardware on Discovery.