dealii in spack - approach to upgrade to latest version 9.3.3 via local git clone of spack

[Simon]

Dear all,

I am currently working with dealii version 9.1.1 and would like to install the latest version because I need access to the new element formulations.

I cloned the spack repository and installed dealii via

'spack install dealii'

and did all necessary instructions imposed by the dealii wiki entry on spack. However, I could not figure out from there how to install a newer version, for instance 9.3.3.

In my local working copy of the spack repository, I only have one master branch so far. I guess I first to need to upgrade spack somehow, in order to be able to install newer versions of a package, since

'spack info dealii'

only shows me versions up to 9.1.1, i.e. the one which I currently have installed.

1. So, should I first create a new branch in my local spack repo and then type

'git fetch origin'

in order to bring spack up to date?

I would like to keep version 9.1.1 as well, so I am a bit afraid of overwriting existing packages if I do everything on the master branch. Is this a valid approach at all or am I on the wrong track?

2. Is special care necessary, if a second version of dealii will be installed?

As far as I know, spack is able to work with several versions of a package. However, I do not know how a second version of dealii affects all it's dependencies, for instance. UMFPACK. Will there newer versions installed 'on-the-fly' as well, for the case they exist,...?

My lack of experience with spack makes me a bit careful to simple try things out, so I would appreciate to get some guidance how to accomplish this.

Best

Simon

[Bruno Turcksin]

Simon,

On Wednesday, July 21, 2021 at 5:17:05 PM UTC-4 Simon wrote:

In my local working copy of the spack repository, I only have one master branch so far. I guess I first to need to upgrade spack somehow, in order to be able to install newer versions of a package, since

'spack info dealii'

only shows me versions up to 9.1.1, i.e. the one which I currently have installed.

That's correct. You need to update spack to have access to newer versions of deal.II

1. So, should I first create a new branch in my local spack repo and then type

'git fetch origin'

in order to bring spack up to date?

I would like to keep version 9.1.1 as well, so I am a bit afraid of overwriting existing packages if I do everything on the master branch. Is this a valid approach at all or am I on the wrong track?

You can do git fetch origin and then you can get checkout the latest tagged version of  spack. There is no need to create a new branch unless you have modified something in spack

 

2. Is special care necessary, if a second version of dealii will be installed?

As far as I know, spack is able to work with several versions of a package. However, I do not know how a second version of dealii affects all it's dependencies, for instance. UMFPACK. Will there newer versions installed 'on-the-fly' as well, for the case they exist,...?

Spack does not remove the old packages that you have installed. That means that everything that you have installed will still be there. The next release of spack should be smarter but right now what's going to happen is that when you install the new version of deal.II, spack will recompile all the dependencies with newer versions.

Best,

Bruno