Are you using LANDIS-II on Linux, or in supercomputing clusters ? Check out the Apptainers !

[Klemet]

Hello, everybody !

Following some discussions in the LANDIS-II dev group, I've put together a Github repository that contains all of the instructions to download, use, or even create or modify a Apptainer to use LANDIS-II in many different environments.

https://github.com/Klemet/LANDIS-II-Apptainer

These Apptainer can be especially usefull if you're using LANDIS-II on Linux, or in a supercomputing cluster. This is because an Apptainer is basically a self-contained OS with LANDIS-II installed, meaning that all of the dependencies that LANDIS-II needs to run are kept static and controlled, separated from anything else. So no dependencies conflicts, issues or errors; and it also makes your research much more replicable as you can provide the Apptainer with your LANDIS-II installation as a file to anybody.

You'll find a Apptainer ready to download in the repository, with LANDIS-II v7 installed. I'll make one with LANDIS-II v8 in the coming months. The instructions on the repository are very step-by-step and detailled, so you should be capable of creating or modifying your own Apptainer according to your needs even if you haven't heard of it before.

I hope this helps the community to use LANDIS-II in a simpler, faster way, especially on supercomputing environmments ! During my PhD thesis, we were able to run around 500 LANDIS-II simulations in a 4 million hectares landscape in around 4 days thanks to the supercomputing clusters of the Digital Research Alliance of Canada (see here for an example) . It was great to be able to check so many factors between scenarios to isolate effects and interactions; but also to have replicates to estimate the variability between runs.

Have a great day !