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Software Version Management

Software Versions

Much of the software installed on the NeSI cluster have multiple versions available as shown on the supported applications page or by using the module avail or module spider commands.

If only the application name is given a default version will be chosen, generally the most recent one. However it is good practice to load modules using the specific version so you can ensure consistent execution of your job even after the default version has been changed.

If you need a specific version of software, feel free to ask support and we may install it.

Example

module load ANSYS

Will load the default version of ANSYS, in this case 19.2, however this may change.

module load ANSYS/18.1

Will always load that version specifically.

Toolchains and Environment Management

Compiler Toolchains

Many of the software modules on the cluster are built with a specific compiler toolchain (often referred to as simply a toolchain). A toolchain is the compiler and development libraries that are used to build software on the cluster.

You can see this in the module version, such as the following:

Python/3.11.6-foss-2023a
PnetCDF/1.9.0-intel-2020a

The software version and toolchain are separated by the first hyphen, for instance the version of Python is 3.11.6 and the toolchain it was built with is foss-2023a. Whareas PnetCDF was built with intel-2020a These are incompatible toolchains since they use different compilers and have conflicting dependencies. Therefore loading these modules in the same environment with either conflict and fail, or will swap module dependencies which will cause some of your software to crash or fail with a library error. For example if I try to load the software above I receive the following notification:

The following have been reloaded with a version change:
  1) GCCcore/12.3.0 => GCCcore/9.2.0
  2) binutils/2.40-GCCcore-12.3.0 => binutils/2.32-GCCcore-9.2.0
  3) zlib/1.2.13-GCCcore-12.3.0 => zlib/1.2.11-GCCcore-9.2.0

Python and other applications may initially run without error, but at some point a compatibility or conflict error will arise. So if you ever see a notification of reloading module versions, check the module toolchain versions.

If you need help with this or require a software built with a specific toolchain reach out to support@nesi.org.nz

System Toolchain

If a module has no toolchain in it's name, then it is built with the System toolchain and should be compatible with all other toolchains. Examples of this are utilities such as zlib, binutils and others, for example:

binutils/2.32
CUDA/12.5.0