LArSoft

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Software for Liquid Argon time projection chambers

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Overview page of LArSoft with SPACK

Jan 28, 2025

At present, LArSoft is in the process of migrating from the Fermilab developed UPS packaging tool to the community developed and supported Spack packaging tool. The use of Spack as the LArSoft package manager is expected to provide greatly improved flexibility to the experiments in building their software stacks relative to the standard tools provided by the LArSoft team, and will reduce the effort required to support the LArSoft software stack, thereby freeing effort to work on other high priority tasks.

The new system will provide the multi-product development tool (mpd), a Spack extension that allows users to develop CMake based packages in concert with Spack-provided external software. Users are invited to use the current, beta-quality version of mpd.

Release mechanisms and procedures are still under development, where efforts are focused on exploring a new continuous integration solution.Full technical and procedural details will be provided as they become available.

For additional details, see the presentations and “Plan for Standard Builds” document discussed at the Dec. 10, 2024 LArSoft Coordination Meeting

The interim solution

UPS will not be supported under AL9, and SL7 reach EOL on June 30, 2024. Consequently, until Spack is fully deployed, all LArSoft builds must be performed within SL7 containers. See the Developing LArSoft with Containers page for more information on how to do that.

Spack builds of LArSoft

Until the Spack migration is completed, there will be a limited number of Spack-based LArSoft builds available for either SL7 or AL9.

The most recent version of LArSoft built under Spack is v10.00.03. To set up under AL9:

The most recent v09 series release is v09.90.01. To set up on AL9: