Summary
The 2022.1 Argon Software Stack is quite a bit different on the backend from previous stacks. This leads to some differences in behavior when interacting with the stack and this will be discussed below. The goal is that using this stack should be familiar but hopefully a little better as well. Many packages have been updated and new packages have been added and more will be added over time. As always, please report any issues to research-computing@uiowa.edu.
What is new
Distribution Mechanism
Up until now all of the software stacks have been distributed to login and compute nodes via NFS (Network File System). Beginning with the 2022.1 stack the distribution mechanism will use the CernVM File System, also known as CVMFS. This is designed for software distribution over a wide network and it is felt that this will be an improvement in how software is delivered to the Argon login and compute nodes. Note that this does not apply to the older software stacks which will continue to be deployed via NFS.
Gentoo Prefix Middle Layer
A Gentoo Prefix layer is put on top of the OS layer and the software packages are linked to the libraries of this middle layer. This layer is exported via CVMFS along with the software packages. The goal of this is to make the packages as independent of the underlying OS as possible. The primary motivation for this is to make it possible to upgrade or change the underlying OS without breaking the ability of the software to run on the newer OS. This also lays the foundation for being able to run the Argon software stack on non-Argon systems, but that is further down the road. Finally, this can also play a role in software reproducibility. This is effectively a cross-compiled environment and there are some caveats that come with that, which will be discussed below. Note that there could be some issues due to using a middle layer, so please report if something seems odd or broken.
Native Lua module files for LMod
Argon uses Lmod for environment modules but previous software stacks used TCL based environment module files for historical and technical reasons. Those TCL files needed to be converted to Lua files on the fly, and while that is a pretty fast conversion it does add overhead. The Lmod Lua files should provide a performance boost for searching for and loading modules and also provides extra capabilities.