How to use spack-stack to create python module/environments etc

[JessicaMeixner-NOAA]

In hpc-stack, we could create a yml/conda recipe with python modules that are desired and create a module that could then be used for that set of python modules. Is there a way to do this with spack-stack? I've looked at the documentation and don't see how to do this.

[climbfuji]

This is what we do at JCSDA with JEDI (including EWOK-Skylab workflow, that has a ton of dependencies):

1. The usual basic spack load: module use ... && module load stack-compiler && module load stack-mpi && module load stack-python
2. Load JEDI modules that contain a number of python packages (can also load them individually): module load jedi-fv3-env soca-env ewok-env
3. Create virtual environment and install missing packages (make sure that which python3 points to the spack-built python): python3 -m venv venv && source venv/bin/activate && python3 -m pip install missing-package. This will use existing python packages in spack-stack environment as dependencies for packages that are getting installed.