Modules

In computing, a module is a unit of software that is designed to be independent, interchangeable, and contains everything necessary to provide the desired functionality. The term "module" may sometimes have a more specific meaning depending on the context. This page describes a few types of modules and suggests links to further documentation content.

Disambiguation

Lmod modules

Also called "environment modules", Lmod modules are used to alter your (shell) environment so as to enable you to use a particular software package, or to use a non-default version of certain common software packages such as compilers. See Using modules.

Python modules

In Python, a module is a file of code (usually Python code) which can be loaded with the import ... or from ... import ... statements to provide functionality. A Python package is a collection of Python modules; the terms "package" and "module" are frequently interchanged in casual use.

Certain frequently used Python modules such as Numpy can be imported if you first load the scipy-stack Lmod module at the shell level. See SciPy stack for details.

We maintain a large collection of Python "wheels." These are modules which are pre-compiled to be compatible with the Standard software environments. Before importing modules from our wheels, you should create a virtual environment.

Python modules which are not in the scipy-stack Lmod module or in our wheels collection can be installed from the internet as described in the Installing packages section.

Other related topics

The main Available software page is a good starting point. Other related pages are:

• Standard software environments: as of April 1, 2021, StdEnv/2020 is the default collection of Lmod modules
• Lmod modules specific to Niagara
• Tables of Lmod modules optimized for AVX, AVX2 and AVX512 CPU instructions
• Category Software: a list of different software pages in this wiki, including commercial or licensed software