Spack %%spack_version%% Container Image

Spack is a package manager for supercomputers. It provides build recipes for more than 6000 software components, and it allows to build entire HPC application stacks with little to no prerequisites.

This container image serves as a build environment for a Dockerfile or an apptainter.def file created by spack containerize. It can be used to run spack commands directly as well. Doing this may require to bind-mount local directories into the container.

How to use the image

This image may be used to build and containerize application stacks using Spack. The stack is installed in a base container such as SLE BCI Base. To build a containerized application stack, create the file spack.yaml in an empty directory with the following content:

spack:
  specs:
  - <application spec>

  container:
    format: <container_format>
    images:
      build: "registry.opensuse.org/opensuse/bci/spack:%%spack_version%%-%RELEASE%"
      final: "registry.suse.com/bci/bci-base:latest"
    os_packages:
      command: zypper
      build:
      - <additional packages for building>
      final:
      - <additional packages for final container>

Replace 'application spec' with the actual application name, and provide optional build specifications (for details see the Spack documentation). The 'container_format' can be either docker for a docker/OCI container image or singularity for a Singularity/Apptainer container image. The os_packages section is optional. Here you may specify additional packages to install in the build container or in the final runtime container image. To build an Apptainer container, run the following commands in the same directory:

$ spack containerize > apptainer.def
$ apptainer build apptainer.sif apptainer.def

This builds apptainer.sif as the final Singularity/Apptainer image that can then be run as follows:

$ apptainer exec ./apptainer.sif <command line ...>

To build a docker/OCI container, run the following commands:

$ spack containerize > Containerfile
$ podman build -t <target_name> --format=docker .

This builds a Docker container that you can run as follows:

$ podman run -it --rm <target_name> <command line ...>

If you do not have a local installation of Spack, you can use this container to run Spack commands - like spack containerize:

$ podman run -v $(pwd):/root:Z --rm registry.opensuse.org/opensuse/bci/spack:%%spack_version%%-%RELEASE% containerize > Containerfile

For further information, refer to the (Spack documentation on container images)[https://spack.readthedocs.io/en/latest/containers.html].