spack/spack v0.11.0

on GitHub

Spack v0.11.0 contains many improvements since v0.10.0.
Below is a summary of the major features, broken down by category.

New packages

• Spack now has 2,178 packages (from 1,114 in v0.10.0)
• Many more Python packages (356) and R packages (471)
• 48 Exascale Proxy Apps (try spack list -t proxy-app)

Core features for users

• Relocatable binary packages (spack buildcache, #4854)
• Spack now fully supports Python 3 (#3395)
• Packages can be tagged and searched by tags (#4786)
• Custom module file templates using Jinja (#3183)
• spack bootstrap command now sets up a basic module environment (#3057)
• Simplified and better organized help output (#3033)
• Improved, less redundant spack install output (#5714, #5950)
• Reworked spack dependents and spack dependencies commands (#4478)

Major new features for packagers

• Multi-valued variants (#2386)
• New conflicts() directive (#3125)
• New dependency type: test dependencies (#5132)
• Packages can require their own patches on dependencies (#5476)
  • depends_on(..., patches=<patch list>)
• Build interface for passing linker information through Specs (#1875)
  • Major packages that use blas/lapack now use this interface
• Flag handlers allow packages more control over compiler flags (#6415)
• Package subclasses support many more build systems:
  • autotools, perl, qmake, scons, cmake, makefile, python, R, WAF
  • package-level support for installing Intel HPC products (#4300)
• spack blame command shows contributors to packages (#5522)
• spack create now guesses many more build systems (#2707)
• Better URL parsing to guess package version URLs (#2972)
• Much improved PythonPackage support (#3367)

Core

• Much faster concretization (#5716, #5783)
• Improved output redirection (redirecting build output works properly #5084)
• Numerous improvements to internal structure and APIs

Tutorials & Documentation

• Many updates to documentation
• New tutorial material from SC17
  • configuration
  • build systems
  • build interface
  • working with module generation
• Documentation on docker workflows and best practices

Selected improvements and bug fixes

• No longer build Python eggs -- installations are plain directories (#3587)
• Improved filtering of system paths from build PATHs and RPATHs (#2083, #3910)
• Git submodules are properly handled on fetch (#3956)
• Can now set default number of parallel build jobs in config.yaml
• Improvements to setup-env.csh (#4044)
• Better default compiler discovery on Mac OS X (#3427)
  • clang will automatically mix with gfortran
• Improved compiler detection on Cray machines (#3075)
• Better support for IBM XL compilers
• Better tab completion
• Resume gracefully after prematurely terminated partial installs (#4331)
• Better mesa support (#5170)

Spack would not be possible without our community. Thanks to all of our
contributors for the
new features and packages in this release!