MRG Interactive Developments

Mesoscale Research Group, McGill/SUNY/UQAM

Basic Instructions for the Simple Software Manager (SSM)



Introduction to SSM

The Simple Software Manager (SSM) is a SourceForge registered project managed by developers at the Canadian Meteorological Centre. It is intended to be a simple mechanism for installing and maintaining software packages. Full documentation for the package is available here.

Installing SSM

SSM Installation Notes

Notes on install_ssm.ksh

  • The standard install driectory is $HOME/ssm.
  • On a x86 system without Python, you may try to comment the without_python flag, but this option is generally unsupported (the best answer is probably to install Python).
  • The Subscribe_System option allows a privilged user to change /etc/profile for all users.
  • The Install PGI option is only for systems on the MSC computing network that can access the CMC/RPN license server. All other users must provide their own compilers. If building for a user with their own PG license, do not use the Install PGI option.
  • Users accessing the CMC/RPN license server will be at risk of failures if the license server's name changes.
  • Accidental user of Install PGI can be easily corrected by changing the PG license.dat.ref license file.

SSM Installation Instructions

  1. Uninstall any previously-installed SSM release by checking the contents of install_ssm.ksh.
  2. Get the new installer to the armnlib home directory using wget http://collaboration.cmc.ec.gc.ca/science/ssm/install_ssm.ksh
  3. Modify the appropriate sections of install_ssm.ksh.
  4. If only the tools are necessary (no compilation), then skip the compiler section in install_ssm.ksh.
  5. Run install_ssm.ksh.
  6. After Phase 2 (compiler), go to the testing subdirectory.
  7. Platforms other than those immediately recognized are contained in the EXAMPLES subdirectory.
  8. For compiler testing, run GENMACROS to execute the autoarmnlib guessing tests.
    • A custom rpnmacros.h is generated here.
    • The architecture is appended with _custom.
  9. Continue with installation from home directory by running install_ssm.ksh.
  10. Custom MPI installations are not supported, and should skip Phase 4 of the installation process.
  11. Once the install_ssm.ksh script has finished running, check that all EC_ssm references link to .profile_$ARCH.
  12. If the user is running bash rather than Korn shell (ksh), you will need to add the following to the end of the $HOME/.bashrc file: . $HOME/.profile

Installing Packages with SSM

All packages are contained at http://collaboration.cmc.ec.gc.ca/science/ssm/, and are also available locally at /home/dormrb02/ssm. Note that the -d argument in the commands below is only necessary if you are installing ssm in a non-standard (home) location.

  1. To install from the default repository, do: ssm install -d dir -p pkg To install from a local file (e.g. in the current directory): ssm install -d dir -u `pwd` -p pkg
    2. Note that the argument for -u can be any absolute path.
  2. ssm publish -d dir -p pkg

Creating Packages for SSM

The SSM installation outlined above deal only with the environment. All applications (including the model) need to be packaged independently. The COMM model is a first priority for packaging. Note that scripts are built in architecture = all packages only, and should be placed in the bin during construction.

  1. If you would like to use the automated package builder, skip to step 2, otherwise prepare a package distribution area with ssmprep -basePath dir -p pkg
    2. where the dir listed here is a user-specified build area.
  2. To make life easier, try running the /users/dor/armn/lib/ovbin/SSMPREP pkg script to prepare the directory strucutre for you.
  3. Ensure that you have the correct naming convention: name_version_architecture
  4. Package all of your distribution into the "allowed" subdirectories of the ssm package: bin, etc, include, lib, man, share. All other subdirectories in the package will be ignored.
  5. In the subdirectories of your SSM build directory, change hooks and control, then chmod u+x make-ssm and run it.


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