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Reference software environments

CompSoft maintains a set of reference software environments that include the software packages necessary to complete many of the highest-priority scientific analyses.

These environments are available on all machines in the IGWN Computing Grid, providing a consistent research environment regardless of the location.

Software changes are controlled

Which packages are included in the reference environments and metapackages is controlled by the Software Change Control Board, for full details see https://sccb.docs.ligo.org/.

The IGWN Conda Distribution

The primary reference software environments are the IGWN Conda Distribution. This distribution provides the production (stable) reference software environments, as well as proposed and testing environments that include advanced versions of packages.

For full details, see https://computing.docs.ligo.org/conda/.

Operating System-native environments

As well as the IGWN Conda Distribution, the CompSoft provides a suite of metapackages that support installation of groups of packages using the native package manager for the OS.

The metapackages are available for a variety of versions of Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) and Debian. Full documentation can be found at

https://computing.docs.ligo.org/software/metapackages/

In particular please refer to the IGWN Metapackages User Guided for details of how to use these metapackages, how to request changes, and how to contribute.