EasyBuild [1] is a software build and installation framework written in Python that allows you to install software in a structured, repeatable and robust way.

It is motivated by the need for a tool that allows to:

• independently install multiple versions of a software package side-by-side
• support multiple compilers and libraries for building a software package and its dependencies
• keep the package configuration simple
• divert from the standard configure / make / make install with custom procedures (which is often necessary for scientific packages)
• use environment modules for dependency resolution and making the software available to users in a transparent way
• keep record of the installation logs
• keep track of installation configuration in version control

Some key properties of EasyBuild:

• installation configuration is done using a (very concise) .eb specification file
• custom behaviour is described in easyblocks; these are Python classes that can be plugged into the EasyBuild framework
• the generation of the module files to easily make the software available to users
• the dependencies for installation are resolved using environment modules and can be automatically installed using the robot feature
• after the installation, the specification files can be sent to a repository for archiving

For more information on EasyBuild, see the documentation wiki on github [3].

EasyBuild requires Python 2.4 (or a more recent 2.x version) to be available, as well as the environment-modules software package [4].

The GitPython Python module [5] is recommended, especially when EasyBuild is being used from a git repository.

See [6] for more information on EasyBuild dependencies.

To see EasyBuild in action, build HPL with the robot feature of EasyBuild, by running the following (bash/sh syntax):

export EBHOME="<path to where you unpacked EasyBuild>"
export CFGS="$EBHOME/easybuild/easyconfigs"
${EBHOME}/eb --robot ${CFGS} ${CFGS}/h/HPL/HPL-2.0-goalf-1.1.0.eb

This will build and install HPL, after building and installing a GCC-based compiler toolkit and all of its dependencies using the default EasyBuild configuration, which will install to $HOME/.local/easybuild/software.

The entire process should take about an hour on a recent system.

Module files will be provided in $HOME/.local/easybuild/modules/all, so to load the provided modules, update your MODULEPATH environment variable.

Note: this demo requires a C and C++ compiler to be available on your system, e.g., gcc and g++.

To get started, you first need to configure EasyBuild for use [7].

Once this is done, using EasyBuild is as simple as creating a .eb specification file, and providing it to the framework:

easybuild/eb example.eb

For command line options, see

easybuild/eb -h (or --help)

Documentation on writing your own .eb specification files is available on the EasyBuild github wiki [8].

To add support for a particular software package that requires a custom installation procedure, you will need to implement an easyblock that can be plugged into the EasyBuild framework [9].

A step-by-step guide to getting started with EasyBuild is provided on the github wiki [10].

EasyBuild has mainly been tested on RPM-based 64-bit Linux systems, i.e., Scientific Linux 5.x/6.x. Support for other Linux distributions and operating systems is pending.

EasyBuild is developed by the High-Performance Computing team at Ghent University [2] and is made available under the GNU General Public License (GPL) version 2.

[1] https://github.com/hpcugent/easybuild [2] http://www.ugent.be/hpc/en [3] https://github.com/hpcugent/easybuild/wiki/Home [4] http://modules.sourceforge.net/ [5] http://gitorious.org/git-python [6] https://github.com/hpcugent/easybuild/wiki/Dependencies [7] https://github.com/hpcugent/easybuild/wiki/Configuration [8] https://github.com/hpcugent/easybuild/wiki/Specification-files [9] https://github.com/hpcugent/easybuild/wiki/Development-guide [10] https://github.com/hpcugent/easybuild/wiki/Step-by-step-guide