We have been using UPS/UPD from fnal for this (mainly for root and
packages like that):

http://www.fnal.gov/docs/products/ups/

Being somewhat disconnected from fnal here, I am not really sure how
well supported ups/upd is these days, it is hard to get much information
on it. I'd be interested if anyone from fnal might comment.

I guess the most popular package to do this kind of thing is "modules",
http://modules.sourceforge.net/

Graham

On Wed, May 27, 2009 at 06:09:57PM -0700, Matt Harrington wrote:
> This isn't specifically a Scientific Linux question, but I suspect
> many of the list's readers are in the same boat as me.  We have about
> 30 scientific packages, of which about 20 are command-line only and
> about 10 are GUI applications.  Rather than have massive, slow,  and
> unmaintainable .cshrc/.bashrc files, people use an application called
> "prepare" to set up each app as necessary.  "prepare" originally came
> from Johan Postma at EMBL Heidelberg and unfortunately its website
> seems to have disappeared.  It's a clever csh script which detects the
> architecture in use and then sources an appropriate csh file to set up
> environment variables and aliases.  Originally it worked with IRIX and
> OSF/1, and when Linux came on the scene I made the necessary
> modifications.  The idea is that "prepare ccp4" will set up the CCP4
> package for whatever type of computer a user is currently using: SGI,
> Tru64 Alpha, Linux Alpha, Linux x86, or Linux AMD64.  Simply typing
> "prepare" gives a list of applications currently configured for the
> computer in use.
> 
> This has worked well, but I haven't revisited this issue in 15 years
> and am wondering how the rest of the scientific world solves this
> problem.  All comments welcomed.
> 
> Matt
> UCSF

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Graham Allan - I.T. Manager
School of Physics and Astronomy - University of Minnesota
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