A propos

CondimenStation is a salt-derived environment to maintain and share state on personal laptops in an ad-hoc way. It enables users to setup their laptops and dotfiles. It enables teams to setup separate programming environment for each project and share them. The goal is to limit the amount of pain when joining a project, while maintaining complete freedom for each user to do whatever she cares.

Basically, it's github's boxen but chaotic good. With salt rather than puppet, YAML rather than a homegrown DSL, and python rather than ruby.

Installation

1. Create a directory to hold stuff

2. Inside this main directory clone CondimentStation to subdirectory CondimentStation

3. Fork mdavezac/template_black-garlic and rename your fork to black-garlic

4. Clone your black-garlic to a subdirectory black-garlic inside the main directory

5. Edit the files in pillar/black-garlic to fit your preferences

6. From the main directory, run CondimentStation/bootstrap.sh

7. Setup your environment to use spack. My zprofile has:

   export SPACK_ROOT=<spack root>
   source $SPACK_ROOT/share/spack/setup-env.sh
   
   [[ -e /usr/local/Cellar/lmod/5.9.3/init/zsh ]] && \
     source /usr/local/Cellar/lmod/5.9.3/init/zsh
   module use $HOME/.funwith

   Where by default <spack_root> is /path/to/main/directory/from/this/readme/build/spack or whatever you've decided on in the pillar black-garlic/pillar/spack.sls

Usage

Once installed, you should be able to do:

module load condiment_station

This will setup your environment so you can run states. The states are the .sls files found directly in:

• main_directory/black-garlic
• main_directory/CondimentStation
• main_directory/black-garlic/projects
• main_directory/

Starting with the top-most and falling back to the ones below if a state is not found.

A state can be called with:

pinch.py run CondimentStation.projects.condiment_station

This will run the state file CondimentStation/projects/condiment_station.sls. Thanks to the fall-back mechanism, we could also just run it with pinch.py projects.condiment_station assuming no such file exist in black-garlic.

Any state accessible from black-garlic/top.sls will run when pinch.py run is called without argument.

pinch.py can also run arbitrary salt modules:

pinch.py call pillar.items

Or show an state file before running it

pinch.py show black-garlic

That particular state is a staple from the black-garlic template. It simply inherits from the state in CondimentStation/projects/condiment_station. Do look inside black-garlic/projects/black-garlic.sls to figure out add your own stuff to somebody-elses project.

Adding other peoples projects

The pillar black-garlic/pillar/condiments make it easy to add other peoples dotfiles/projects and include them in your own.

Assuming it contains:

condiments:
   chilly-oil:
       github: mdavezac/black-garlic

Then running:

pinch.py run condiments

Will download mdavezac's black-garlic into the chilly-oil subdirectory of the main directory. From there, it can be used directly by running pinch.py run chilly-oil.some_state or by including states in your own black-garlic.

Exemplar project file

{% set compiler = salt["spack.compiler"]() %}
{% set python = salt['pillar.get']('python', 'python3') %}
{% set mpilib = salt['pillar.get']('mpi', 'openmpi') %}
{% set project = sls.split('.')[-1] %}
{% set workspace = salt['funwith.workspace'](project) %}

{{project}} spack packages:
  spack.installed:
    - pkgs: &spack_packages
      - GreatCMakeCookoff
      - eigen %{{compiler}} -fftw -scotch -metis -suitesparse
      - swig %{{compiler}}

{{workspace}}/{{python}}:
  virtualenv.managed:
    - python: {{python}}
    - pip_upgrade: True
    - use_wheel: True
    - pip_pkgs: [pip, numpy, scipy, pytest, pandas, cython, behave]

DCPROGS/HJCFIT:
  github.latest:
    - target: {{workspace}}/src/{{project}}

dcprogs:
  funwith.modulefile:
    - spack: *spack_packages
    - virtualenv: {{workspace}}/{{python}}
{% if compiler == "gcc" %}
    - footer: |
        setenv("CXX", "g++-6")
        setenv("CC", "gcc-6")
{% endif %}

There are few variables of interest here:

• compiler: specifies the spack compiler collection to use. It can be modified from the command-line with pinch.py run --compiler clang
• python: either python2 or python3 and can also be modified from the command-line.
• project: the name of the current sls file, for convenience
• workspace: a project-specific location where the projects can go.

Running the file above will create a virtualenv in the specific workspace directory, add some spack packages, download the sources for the program of interest, and add a module file to setup the enviroment.

After running this particular project, it should be possible to do:

module load dcprogs

And the dcprogs environment will be setup so the right spack libraries are found, the virtualenv is activated, etc...

Configuration

All configuration should happen in files in the pillar subdirectory of your black-garlic. These file need to be included in black-garlic/pillar/top.sls for salt to register them.

black-garlic/pillar/secrets.sls: Never commited to version control. This is where secrets should go.

workspaces: A directory where all project workspaces will go.

modulefiles: A directory where all project module files will go. This directory should be loaded by lmod, module use <directory>, somewhere in your .bash_profile.

spack:compilers_file: Points to a file defining spack-compilers. See spack itself for a description. Optional.

spack:external_packages: Points to a file defining the equivalent of spack-packages installed some other way (brew?). See spack for description.

spack:directory: Where the main spack repo will go

spack:repo_prefix: Where subsidiary repos of spack-packages are installed.

spack:repos: Dictionary with subsidiary spack repos.

The following configuration is generated by CondimentStation/bin/bootstrap.sh into black-garlic/pillar/salt.sls and should not be messed with:

user: User using condiment station

condiment_prefix: Main directory for condiment station

condiment_dir: Directory containing CondimentStation itself

condiment_python: Executable with to the python executable for the virtualenv used by condiment station

condiment_build_dir: Directory with most files generated by CondimentStation. This directory can be removed and then regenerated with CondimentStation/bin/bootstrap.sh