Developer Contributions
------------------------

Often package installers at HPC sites have a difficult time figuring out
what should be in the modulefiles, in terms of information and the
environment variable setting they want the package to have.  
Often there is no consistency in the content and/or format
in the modulefiles.

Developers can indirectly and directly contribute to the content of
modulefiles.

Indirectly, developers already contribute to a consistency by 
using directory names consistent with the Filesystem Hierarchy Standard,
FHS_ (also content in `Wikipedia FHS`).
See /usr directory in the Filesystem Hierarchy Standard (bin, lib, include, etc.).

Directly, developers can contribute by providing basic package
information that can be included in  *whatis* modulefile entries
(key-value pairs), as shown in the examples above. Mkmod searches
for a file named ``modules_what`` (and provides variable substitution\\-\\-
which should be minimal for package-provided information).
At TACC, the *Name*, *Version*, *Category*, *URL* and 
*Description* keywords (and values) are included in all modulefiles so that
a software catalogue can be built, from the *key:value* pairs
in all the installed modulefiles. The following example shows
the content of a ``modules_whatis`` file that would provide sites
with developer "blessed" package information (useful to 
installers and mkmod). The following table lists the 
*whatis* information that TACC provides for XALT::

       Name:        XALT
       Version:     2.4
       Category:    tools
       Keywords:    System, TOOLS
       URL:         http://xalt.sf.net
       Description: Collects system usage data

Likewise, developers can provide their own *help* information in 
a ``modules_help`` file as plain text (with variable substitution).
The list of possible help instructions include:

* Examples of package execution
* Compiler and loader options for libraries
* List of runtime environment variables for package and suggested values

.. _FHS: https://refspecs.linuxfoundation.org/FHS_3.0/fhs-3.0.pdf

.. _Wikipedia FHS: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Filesystem_Hierarchy_Standard