Smithy is a tool that aims to replicate and improve upon functionality of SWTools.
More information and a tutorial can be found on the manpage.
Smithys goal is to make following the SWTools conventions easier and less error prone. Improvements include:
- Simpler command line interface. You can compile a new piece of software with two commands.
- Simpler rebuild scripts (8 lines instead of 49).
- Automatic generation of modulefiles.
- Automatic generation of build scripts depending on the environment or compiler.
- Write software descriptions without html.
- Search for software, report who built it, and when.
- Cleaner, shorter, and more maintainable code.
Smithy requires ruby 1.9.2 or later. Most distrubutions only ship version 1.8.7
and you may need build your own copy. The simplest way is using the excellent
ruby-build script. As an example,
this will install ruby with a prefix of /sw/xk6/ruby/1.9.3-p286/sles11.1_gnu4.3.4
curl -L https://github.com/sstephenson/ruby-build/archive/master.zip -o ruby-build.zip
unzip ruby-build.zip
cd ruby-build-master
./bin/ruby-build -h
./bin/ruby-build --definitions
./bin/ruby-build 1.9.3-p286 /sw/xk6/ruby/1.9.3-p286/sles11.1_gnu4.3.4
Many sites use Environment Modules to allow users to load and unload software into their environment. Here is sample modulefile for ruby installed in the previous example.
#%Module1.0
proc ModulesHelp { } {
puts stderr "Ruby 1.9.3 patch 286"
puts stderr "The gem command will install gems to the ~/.gem directory."
}
module-whatis "Ruby 1.9.3-p286"
set PREFIX /sw/xk6/ruby/1.9.3-p286/sles11.1_gnu4.3.4
prepend-path PATH $PREFIX/bin
prepend-path LD_LIBRARY_PATH $PREFIX/lib
prepend-path MANPATH $PREFIX/share/man
setenv GEM_HOME $env(HOME)/.gem/ruby/1.9.1
setenv GEM_PATH $env(HOME)/.gem/ruby/1.9.1:$PREFIX/lib/ruby/gems/1.9.1
prepend-path PATH $env(HOME)/.gem/ruby/1.9.1/bin:$PREFIX/lib/ruby/gems/1.9.1/bin
This file should be saved to $MODULEPATH/ruby/1.9.3
There are two ways to install smithy. The simplest is by simply installing the
software_smithy gem. This will install smithy and it's required gems in
your home directory:
gem install software_smithy
If you are installing in production for all users you will want to install smithy somewhere everyone can access. There are two places you might want to do this:
If you installed manually using the examples above, this will be something like
PREFIX/lib/ruby/gems/1.9.1 This will give access to smithy whenever
ruby is loaded into a users environment using the modulefile above. To install
to ruby's default GEM_PATH (following the above example):
export GEM_HOME=/sw/xk6/ruby/1.9.3-p286/sles11.1_gnu4.3.4/lib/ruby/gems/1.9.1
gem install software_smithy --no-rdoc --no-ri
This is useful if you want a single smithy install location for more than one install of ruby (typically on separate machines). This method is a bit more complicated and requires users to load smithy into their environment manually in addition to ruby.
Assuming you use environment modules you can install smithy to a separate
directory e.g. /sw/tools/smithy with the
install_smithy
script. This will setup a folder containing the smithy gem, a modulefile and a
script that sets up shell completion. Users can load smithy into their
environment by running:
source /sw/tools/smithy/environment.sh
Smithy depends on a config file to define it's behavior. For an example see
etc/smithyrc
This can be set via the $SMITHY_CONFIG environment variable.
You may wish to set this using a modulefile or a shell script. Examples are provided in modulefiles/smithy/1.0 and environment.sh
Smithy is based on the ideas created in SWTools and uses a BSD license. See LICENSE for the exact text.
The smithy github repo contains all development files. Please fork and send me a pull request with any additions or changes.
If you encounter any issues please open an issue on github. Or send me an email.