How to Install Spack on POP! OS Latest?

Spack is an open-source package manager for supercomputers, Linux, and macOS systems that allows users to easily install and manage a variety of software packages. In this tutorial, we will learn how to install Spack on the latest version of POP! OS.

Prerequisites

Before we begin, please make sure that you have the following prerequisites:

  • A system running POP! OS
  • A user account with sudo privileges

Step 1: Install Prerequisites

First, we need to install some dependencies that are required to download and install Spack on POP! OS. Open to your terminal application and run the following command to install the dependencies:

sudo apt update
sudo apt install build-essential git python3 python3-pip python3-venv zlib1g-dev zip unzip

Step 2: Download Spack

Next, we will download Spack from its official Git repository. Open your terminal and run the following command to download the Spack source code:

git clone https://github.com/spack/spack.git

After the download completes, navigate to the Spack directory by running the following command:

cd spack

Step 3: Install and Initialize Spack

Now, we will install and initialize Spack. First, we need to create a virtual environment for Spack using the following command:

python3 -m venv .spack-env

Once the virtual environment is created, activate it as follows:

source .spack-env/bin/activate

Now, we will install Spack by running the following command:

./bin/spack bootstrap

This command will install the Spack packages and dependencies.

Finally, initialize Spack by running the following command:

./bin/spack install cmake

This command will install a default package to initialize Spack.

Step 4: Verify Spack Installation

To verify that Spack has been installed correctly, we can try using it to install a package. For example, run the following command to install the hello-world package:

./bin/spack install hello-world

If installation completes successfully, you have installed Spack correctly.

Conclusion

In this tutorial, we have learned how to download, install, and initialize Spack on the latest version of POP! OS. We have also verified its installation by installing a package using Spack. You are now ready to use Spack to install other software packages.