DUNE Spack Project¶

Documentation, training material, issue tracking, and project coordination for Spack development and use across DUNE — including MPD (multi-package development, the mrb/mrb gitCheckout successor built as a Spack extension) — the docs/training/issues hub that was missing alongside the existing spack config and package repos.

Quick links¶

Get started¶

• Use the DUNE software stack — start with the DUNE Spack Cheat-Sheet for everyday commands, then the DUNE Computing Basics setup guide for the CVMFS entry point and dune-prototype environment.
• Develop across multiple DUNE packages — see MPD (multi-package development) below; MPD is the mrb-successor workflow for checking out and building several related repos together.
• Develop or package DUNE software with Spack — see the DUNE Spack repositories below, the Repositories page for what each one contains, and upstream Spack and the Fermilab fork for where things live.
• Learn Spack — see Spack tutorials.
• Report a problem or request documentation — see Issues.
• Edit this site or add a page — see Contributing.

DUNE Spack repositories¶

See Repositories for what each one actually contains and how they relate to each other, plus the Fermilab-maintained repos below.

MPD (multi-package development)¶

MPD is the mrb/mrb gitCheckout successor: a Spack extension for cloning, building, and iterating on several related DUNE/LArSoft packages together (spack mpd init, spack mpd git-clone, spack mpd build, ...).

• FNALssi/spack-mpd — source repository and doc/ (Initialization, Creation, Building, Selection, Removing, Zapping)
• Developing LArSoft with Spack — LArSoftWiki getting-started page combining Spack and MPD workflows
• Kyle Knoepfel, "Multi-package development at Fermilab with Spack," CHEP 2024/2025 proceedings (FERMILAB-CONF-25-0228-CSAID) — design rationale for MPD's two-layer split (Spack resolves dependencies, MPD drives CMake/CTest for packages under active development)

Upstream Spack and the Fermilab fork¶

Spack 1.x splits core from package recipes, so no single link is "the DUNE Spack instance" — these together describe where DUNE's deployment comes from:

• Upstream Spack: spack/spack is the project itself; its full reference documentation is hosted on Read the Docs at spack.readthedocs.io.
• Fermilab fork: FNALssi/spack is a fork of upstream Spack that DUNE builds on, maintained by Fermilab Scientific Software Infrastructure (SSI). See also FNALssi/spack-at-fnal (Fermilab usage documentation) and FNALssi/fermi-spack-tools (tools for managing Fermilab Spack instances).
• DUNE Computing Basics setup guide — the DUNE-specific CVMFS entry point and dune-prototype environment, with OS-specific variants for SL7 and AL9

Spack tutorials¶

Curated by audience — for a DUNE training event, pin a tested tutorial edition and Spack version rather than linking /latest/ directly.

• Spack 101 — general entry point, reusable training container
• Basic installation — new users
• Environments — most relevant to DUNE users
• Package creation — DUNE package maintainers
• Stacks — release/deployment maintainers

Migration tracking¶

Tracking DUNE's transition to newer Spack releases (Spack 1.0/1.1): Spack 1.0 migration project (org-wide GitHub Project board).

Issues¶

Open issues across the DUNE Spack repos and MPD are tracked together on the DUNE Spack & MPD Issues board, which pulls in issues from dune-spack-config, dune-spack-envs, dune_spack, dune-release-configs, and FNALssi/spack-mpd. It has three views:

• DUNE+FNALssi — table view, everything in one list
• DUNE Repos — table view, DUNE-org repos only
• DUNE Kanban — board view, grouped by status

Reporting a problem¶

1. Open the issue in whichever of the five tracked repos it actually belongs to — dune-spack-config, dune-spack-envs, dune_spack, dune-release-configs, or FNALssi/spack-mpd. Not sure which one? Open it in dune-spack-project (this site's own repo) instead — Issues are enabled here too, and it's a fine catch-all when the right repo isn't obvious.
2. Check the board a minute or two later. Most new issues get added automatically, but this isn't guaranteed for every repo. If yours hasn't shown up:
3. On the issue page, open the Projects panel in the right sidebar and select DUNE Spack & MPD Issues, or
4. From the command line: gh issue edit <issue-url> --add-project "DUNE Spack & MPD Issues".

Opening the issue in a repo is what makes it visible to the board; adding it to the project is the separate step that actually puts it there.

You can also skip a repo entirely and add a draft item straight onto the board itself (the + Add item control at the bottom of any view lets you type a title with no issue behind it yet). That's fine for quick capture, but a draft item isn't a real GitHub issue — nobody can comment on it, label it, or reference it from a PR until someone converts it to an issue in an actual repo, so prefer filing an issue directly when you can.

FAQ¶

DUNE computing FAQ lives in its own repo/site: DUNE/FAQ (tracked as Project #19 in the org-wide GitHub Projects — see that repo for Spack-adjacent questions not yet covered here).

Related¶

• DUNE Phlex Project: the companion site for DUNE's migration from art to the Phlex framework, built with the phlex Spack recipes listed on the Configuration reference
• dune-ghpandp-doc — DUNE Collaboration GitHub Organization Policy and Procedures