Release notes

This file describes changes in recent versions of Modules. It primarily documents those changes that are of interest to users and admins.

Next release (2020-XX-XX)

Doc: fix typos and grammar mistakes on :ref:`module(1)`, :ref:`modulefile(4)` and :ref:`diff_v3_v4` documents. (contribution from Colin Marquardt)
Doc: update cookbook recipes to highlight code of the Tcl scripts included. (contribution from Colin Marquardt)
Doc: improve markup of :ref:`module(1)`, :ref:`modulefile(4)` and :ref:`diff_v3_v4` documents to enable references to module sub-commands, command line switches, environment variables and modulefile Tcl commands. (contribution from Colin Marquardt)
Doc: alphabetically sort module sub-commands, command-line switches, environment variables and modulefile Tcl commands in :ref:`module(1)` and :ref:`modulefile(4)` documents.
Introduce the ml command, a handy frontend to the module command. ml reduces the number of characters to type to trigger module. With no argument ml is equivalent to module list, ml mod corresponds to module load mod and ml -mod means module unload mod. Multiple modules to either load or unload can be combined on a single command. ml accepts all command-line switches and sub-commands accepted by module command. ml command is defined by default. Its definition can be controlled at ./configure time with --enable-ml option or later on with ml configuration option (which defines MODULES_ML environment variable when set).
Fix module sub-command abbreviation match to ensure passed abbreviated form fully match sub-command, not only its minimal abbreviated form. As an example, lod or loda do not match anymore the load sub-command, lo or loa still do.
Add the -j/--json command line switches to the avail, list, savelist, whatis and search module sub-commands to render their output in JSON format. (fix issue #303)
Script: remove need to build project management-specific tools (mtreview, mb, mlprof and playdemo) prior using them.
Script: gather all distributed and maintained scripts in a script directory at the root of the project repository tree.
Install: provide Windows-specific batch files when ./configure option --enable-windows-support is set. module command wrapper module.cmd is installed in bindir and initialization script cmd.cmd in initdir. Those batch files are relocatable and expect modulecmd.tcl in ..\libexec directory. (fix issue #272 with contribution from Jacques Raphanel)
Install: add ml command wrapper ml.cmd and install it in bindir when ./configure option --enable-windows-support is set.
Install: introduce envml command wrapper envml.cmd for Windows cmd shell and install it in bindir when ./configure option --enable-windows-support is set. (contribution from Jacques Raphanel)
Doc: improve documentation portal index.
Install: add dist-win target to Makefile in order to build a distribution zipball containing the required files to run Modules on a Windows platform. INSTALL.bat and UNINSTALL.bat Windows batch files are introduced and shipped in the zipball to automate installation and basic configuration of Modules on the Windows platform.
Doc: update :ref:`INSTALL-win` document to describe how to install Modules with newly provided Windows-specific distribution zipball.
Install: enable build of Modules from git archive tarball or zipball exports (like download source archives automatically provided on GitHub project)
Install: ship reStructuredText and MarkDown source documents at the root of Modules distribution tarball rather their built txt counterpart.
Script: fix createmodule.sh script to correctly analyses environment when shell functions are found defined in it.
Script: inhibit output generated by scripts evaluated by createmodule.sh and createmodule.py to ensure these outputs will not get in the way when analyzing the environment changes. (fix issue #309)
Correctly handle symbolic version target including a whitespace in their name.
Testsuite: output test error details whatever the testsuite run verbose mode.
Install: adapt configure script and Makefile to detect python command location and set it as shebang for createmodule.py and gitlog2changelog.py. If python command is not found, python3 then python2 are searched.
Install: enable to pass a specific Python interpreter command name or location at configure step with --with-python option. Specified command name or location should be found on build system only if building from git repository.
Install: build createmodule.py script and install it in bindir.
Install: update RPM spec file to explicitly define Python interpreter location.
Script: fix createmodule.py script for Python3 (fix issue #315 with contribution from Armin Wehrfritz)
Lift Perl variable strictness when defining _mlstatus variable in case modulecmd.tcl output is directly evaluated without use of the module sub-routine in Perl script. (with contribution from Andrey Maslennikov)
Script: fix path de-duplication in createmodule.sh. (fix issue #316)
Doc: add Handling Compiler and other Package Dependencies cookbook recipe, which discusses various strategies for creating modulefiles for packages with multiple builds depending on previously loaded compiler, MPI libraries, etc. (contribution from Tom Payerle)
Init: test availability of compopt Bash builtin prior using it in Bash completion script to avoid error with versions of this shell older than 4.0. (fix issue #318)
Install: adapt configure step to detect if sed option -E is supported and fallback to -r otherwise in shell completion scripts. (fix issue #317)
Add support for the NO_COLOR environment variable (https://no-color.org/) which when set (regardless of its value) prevents the addition of ANSI color. When set, NO_COLOR prevails over CLICOLOR and CLICOLOR_FORCE environment variables. MODULES_COLOR overrides these three variables. (fix issue #310)
Script: when analyzing environment variable changes in createmodule.sh applied by shell script passed as argument, produce a setenv modulefile statement for any variable found set prior script evaluation and for which value is completely changed after script evaluation. (fix issue #320)
When an error message is composed of multiple lines, render it in the same way whether it is part of a block message or not: lines after the first one are prepended with a 2-space padding. As a result error messages appear clearly separated from each other.
Append to the error message the error stack trace when a general unknown error occurs in modulecmd.tcl and provide a link to encourage users to report such error to the GitHub project.
Add to the error message the error stack trace for errors occurring during site-specific configuration evaluation. Error stack is expunged from the modulecmd.tcl internals to only report information relevant to site-specific configuration file.
When an error occurs during the evaluation of a modulefile or a modulerc, report associated error stack trace expunged from modulecmd.tcl internal references to only output useful information for users.
GitHub: add issue templates to guide people submitting a bug report or a feature request.
Doc: provide a link toward issues that have been fixed between versions 3.2 and 4.0 in :ref:`diff_v3_v4` document.
Script: introduce envml.cmd script for Windows platform providing similar behavior than envml Bash script. (contribution from Jacques Raphanel)

Modules 4.4.1 (2020-01-03)

Fix error and warning messages relative to dependency management to enclose dependency specification in single quotes to clearly distinguish specification from each other.
Skip output of module loading message if module is already loaded.
Doc: add demonstration material played at SC19 to promote the new features of Modules.
Contrib: add playdemo script to play recorded demonstration cast.
Doc: add a web anchor to each modulefile Tcl command, module sub-command and module environment variable documentation.
Install: update RPM spec file to enable build on el8.
Doc: fix RST syntax for bullet lists in design docs. (fix issue #306)
In case module avail query does not match a directory but only its contained elements (for instance module av mod/7 matches mod/7.1 and mod/7.2 but not mod/), fix query processing to correctly return latest or default element in case --latest or --default flags are set.
In case a module avail query performed in a no-indepth mode with --latest or --default flags either enabled or disabled, fix query processing to return directory elements if they are part of result.
When a module avail query performed in no-indepth mode targets a virtual module, fix result to filter-out the directory holding the virtual module from result.
Fix module avail --default queries when modulefile default version does not match query: select latest version from modulefiles matching query unless implicit_default configuration is disabled in which case no default version is returned.
Improve highlighting of module avail and whatis search result by coloring module names matching search query expressed with the advanced version specifiers. name@1,3 or name@1:3 queries now highlight name/1 and name/3 strings found in search result.
Contrib: add the mlprof script which wraps modulecmd.tcl to collect profiling information on its execution.
Contrib: adapt mb script to profile modulecmd.tcl run tests rather bench them when profile argument is passed to the script.
Improve overall performances of module names and versions comparison by introducing optimized procedures and caching in memory module search results.

Modules 4.4.0 (2019-11-17)

Doc: add Return file basename on module-info name for full path modulefile recipe to cookbook. (fix issue #297)
Rework internal handling of configuration options to gather all option definitions in a global array and use the same initialization and retrieval procedure, named getConf, for all these options.
Add the setConf, unsetConf and lappendConf procedures to provide unified ways to set the value of configuration option. These procedures should be used in site configuration files to override configuration option value instead of directly setting corresponding option variable as it was done in previous Modules releases.
Add the ability to match module specification in a case insensitive manner. Default case sensitiveness behavior is set at ./configure time with the --with-icase option. It could be superseded with the MODULES_ICASE environment variable, that could be set with config module sub-command through the icase option. Command-line switch --icase (-i) enables to supersede defined case sensitiveness configuration. (fix issue #212 with contribution from Eric Deveaud)
Introduce the extended default mechanism, to help selecting a module when only the first numbers in its version are specified. Starting portion of the version, part separated from the rest of the version string by a . character, will get matched to the appropriate complete version name. In case multiple versions match partial version specified and only one module should be returned, default version (implicit or explicit) among matches is returned. In case implicit_default option is disabled and no explicit default is found among matches, an error is returned. This mechanism is enabled through a new configuration option named extended_default (which defines MODULES_EXTENDED_DEFAULT environment variable when set). It may be enabled by default in modulecmd.tcl script with option --enable-extended-default passed to the ./configure script.
Introduce the advanced module version specifiers mechanism to specify finer constraints on module version. This new feature enables to filter the module selection to a given version list or range by specifying after the module name a version constraint prefixed by the @ character. It leverages the version specifier syntax of the Spack package manager. A single version can be specified with the @version syntax, a list of versions with @version1,version2,..., a greater than or equal to range with @version1: syntax, a less than or equal to range with @:version2 and an in between or equal to range with @version1:version2 syntax. In case implicit_default option is disabled and no explicit default is found among version specifier matches, an error is returned. This mechanism is enabled through a new configuration option named advanced_version_spec (which defines MODULES_ADVANCED_VERSION_SPEC environment variable when set). It may be enabled by default in modulecmd.tcl script with option --enable-advanced-version-spec passed to the ./configure script.
Conflict defined with a generic module name or an advanced version specifier may match multiple loaded modules (generally in case multiple loaded modules share same root name). Loaded environment analysis has been fixed to bind conflict to all loaded modules matching it. As a result the Dependent Reload mechanism is not triggered when one loaded module matching conflict is removed if another loaded module still match the conflict.
Doc: add Module selection contexts, Insensitive case, Extended default and Advanced module version specifiers design notes.
Make MODULESHOME environment variable controllable through the config sub-command with home configuration option. A --with-moduleshome argument is also added to the ./configure script to set specific default value for this option at installation time. (fix issue #292)

Modules 4.3.1 (2019-09-21)

Contrib: add mb script to bench Modules versions.
Correct modulecmd.tcl script startup to correctly report error in case Tcl extension library fails to load. (fix issue #284)
Install: fix typo on CFLAGS definition in lib/Makefile. (fix issue #287 with contribution from Felix Neumärker)
Remove useless code in Modules Tcl extension library
Make URLs in README correctly rendered in HTML. (contribution from Per Persson)
Doc: clarify modulefile evaluation modes in modulefile.4 man page. (fix issue #289)
When looking at the closest match among loaded modules when switching module with just a single module argument specified, load the information on the currently set environment to get the alternative names of loaded modules prior to look at closest module match. (fix issue #290)
Doc: describe the way to determine the site-specific configuration script location in cookbook recipes implying the installation of such a file. (fix issue #266)
Doc: add Log module command recipe to cookbook. (fix issue #283)
Doc: add Expose procedures and variables to modulefiles recipe to cookbook.
Doc: add Make defined modulepaths persist over sudo recipe to cookbook.
Doc: add Ensure user fully qualify the modules they use recipe to cookbook.
Introduce the wa_277 configuration option to workaround an issue with Tcsh history mechanism. Default module alias definition for Tcsh hits an issue with shell history mechanism: erroneous history entries are recorded each time the module command is called. When wa_277 option is enabled (which sets the MODULES_WA_277 environment variable to 1), an alternative module alias is defined which fixes the history mechanism issue. However the alternative definition of the module alias weakens shell evaluation of the code produced by modulefiles. Characters with special meaning for Tcsh shell (like { and }) may not be used anymore in shell alias definition elsewhere the evaluation of the code produced by modulefiles will return a syntax error. (fix issue #277)
Doc: add Tips for Code Reuse in Modulefiles recipe to cookbook. (contribution from Tom Payerle)
Fix the whatis and paths sub-command results for module symbolic versions targeting a directory when implicit_default configuration option is disabled. No error is returned and same result is now obtained whether the symbolic name or its target is used as argument for those two sub-commands. (fix issue #294)
Fix the whatis and paths sub-command results for module aliases targeting a directory when implicit_default configuration option is disabled. No error is returned and same result is now obtained whether the alias name or its target is used as argument for those two sub-commands. (fix issue #295)
Rework all the ternary operator expressions in modulecmd.tcl that may result in a nan value (whatever the case used to write this string) as the expr Tcl command raises an error when it returns such a value, which breaks Modules as soon as a modulefile, an alias or a symbolic version is named nan. (fix issue #296)

Modules 4.3.0 (2019-07-26)

Introduce Vim addon files to highlight the modulefile syntax. Installation of these files, which is enabled by default, is controlled by the --enable-vim-addons and --vimdatadir configure options. (contribution from Felix Neumärker)
If modulefile is fully read, cache the content read and the file header computed to avoid another file read if the same modulefile need to be read multiple times.
Except for path, paths, list, avail and aliases module commands always fully read a modulefile whether its full content is needed or just its header to verify its validity. Proceed this way to only read file once on commands that first just check modulefile validity then read again valid files to get their full content.
Introduce Modules Tcl extension library (written in C) to extend Tcl language in order to provide more optimized I/O commands to read a file or a directory content than native Tcl commands do.
Install: add --libdir, --enable-libtclenvmodules, --with-tcl and --with-tclinclude options to configure script to control libtclenvmodules build and installation.
When an error is caught during modulecmd.tcl first initialization steps, ensure the error report facility is initialized to render error message.
When looking for modulefiles in enabled modulepaths, take .modulerc file found at the root of a modulepath directory into account. Which means these rc files are now evaluated like global rc files and can be used to define module aliases targeting modulefiles stored in the underlying file tree.
Correctly get available default (-d) and latest (-L) version whether search pattern is passed with an ending forward slash character or not or if it contains a * wildcard character.
Append a forward slash character to any directory result of an avail command to better distinguish these directories from regular files.
Introduce the ability to control whether avail command search results should recursively include or not modulefiles from directories matching search query by use of the --indepth and --no-indepth command-line switches or the environment variable MODULES_AVAIL_INDEPTH. Default behavior is set at the ./configure time with the --enable-avail-indepth and --disable-avail-indepth switches. (fix issue #150)
Update bash, fish and zsh completion scripts to propose available modulefiles in the no in depth mode.
Add the ability to graphically enhance some part of the produced output to improve readability by the use of the --color command-line switch or the MODULES_COLOR environment variable. Both accept the following values: never, auto and always. When color mode is set to auto, output is colored if stderr is attached to a terminal. Default color mode could be controlled at configure time with the --enable-color and the --disable-color option, which respectively correspond to the auto and never color mode.
Control the color to apply to each element with the MODULES_COLORS environment variable or the --with-dark-background-colors and --with-light-background-colors configure options. These variable and options take as value a colon-separated list in the same fashion LS_COLORS does. In this list, each element that should be highlighted is associated to a Select Graphic Rendition (SGR) code.
Inform Modules of the terminal background color with the MODULES_TERM_BACKGROUND environment variable or the --with-terminal-background configure option, which helps to determine if either the dark or light background colors should be used to color output in case no specific color set is defined with the MODULES_COLORS.
Color prefix tag of debug, error, warning, module error and info messages.
Highlight the modulefile or collection name when reporting messages for a an action made over this modulefile or collection.
Color the modulepaths reported on a use command.
Highlight title of separator lines or column name of table header.
Color modulepaths, directories, aliases and symbols reported by the avail, aliases, list, whatis and search commands.
When color mode is enabled and module aliases are colored, do not associate them a @ tag as the color already distinguish them from regular modulefile.
When color mode is enabled and a Select Graphic Rendition (SGR) code is set for the default modulefile symbol, apply this SGR code to the modulefile name instead of associating it the default symbol tag.
Highlight matched module search query string among avail, whatis and search command results.
Highlight the modulefile and collection full path name on display, help, test and saveshow command reports.
Color modulefile Tcl commands set in a modulefile on a display command report.
Color module commands set in a collection on a saveshow command report.
Re-introduce clear sub-command. (fix issue #203)
Leverage --force command-line switch on clear sub-command to skip confirmation dialog. (fix issue #268)
Init: improve readability of variable definition operations by writing one definition operation per line rather having multiple commands on a single line like VAR=val; export VAR. (fix issue #225)
Add the ability to define a site-specific configuration file with an environment variable: MODULES_SITECONFIG. When set, the script file pointed by the variable is sourced (if readable) after the site-specific configuration file initially defined in modulecmd.tcl. (contribution from Ben Bowers, fix issue #234)
Doc: add description in the module.1 man page of MODULERCFILE in the environment section and siteconfig.tcl in the files section.
Install: provide at installation time a bare site-specific configuration script in designated etcdir if no pre-existing siteconfig.tcl file is found at designated location.
Introduce the config sub-command to get and set modulecmd.tcl options and to report its current state.
Contrib: update createmodule.py script to support execution from the cmd shell. (contribution from Jacques Raphanel, fix issue #270)
Add the ability to configure when unloading a module and multiple loaded modules match request if firstly loaded module should be chosen or lastly loaded module. Configure option --with-unload-match-order defines this setting which can be superseded with the MODULES_UNLOAD_MATCH_ORDER environment variable. This variable can be set with the option unload_match_order on the config sub-command. By default, lastly loaded module is selected. It is recommended to keep this behavior when the modulefiles used express dependencies between each other.
Add the ability to configure whether an implicit default version should be defined for modules with no default version explicitly defined. When enabled, which stays the default behavior, a module version is automatically selected (latest one) when the generic name of the module is passed. When implicit default selection is disabled, the name of modules to evaluate should be fully qualified elsewhere an error is returned. This option is set at ./configure time with the --enable-implicit-default and --disable-implicit-default options. It could be superseded with the MODULES_IMPLICIT_DEFAULT environment variable, that could be set with config module sub-command through the implicit_default option.
Install: add to the configure script the --with-locked-configs option to ignore environment variable superseding of Modules configurations defined in modulecmd.tcl script. Lockable configuration option are extra_siteconfig and implicit_default. Currently locked options are reported through the locked_configs option on the config sub-command.
Introduce the ability to control the module search match. Search query string should match module name start or any part of module fully qualified name. Default search match behavior is set at ./configure time with the --with-search-match option. It could be superseded with the MODULES_SEARCH_MATCH environment variable, that could be set with config module sub-command through the search_match option. Command-line switches --starts-with (-S) and --contains (-C) for avail module sub-command enable to supersede defined search match configuration.
Introduce the ability not to set the shell startup file that ensure module command is defined once shell has been initialized. Setting shell startup file currently means defining ENV and BASH_ENV environment variables to the Modules bourne shell initialization script. ./configure options --enable-set-shell-startup and --disable-set-shell-startup define if shell startup should be set or not by default. It could be superseded with the MODULES_SET_SHELL_STARTUP environment variable, that could be set with config module sub-command through the set_shell_startup option.
Cookbook: add the test-modulefiles recipe. (fix issue #182 with contribution from Colin Marquardt)
Fix location of global RC file to @etcdir@/rc instead of @prefix@/etc/rc to cope with @etcdir@ specific setup (@etcdir@ defaults to @prefix@/etc).
Take into account Modules initialization configurations found in etc directory if they exist rather in init directory. If initrc configuration file is found in etcdir then it is preferred over modulerc file in initdir. Following the same trend, modulespath configuration file is found in etcdir then it is preferred over .modulespath file in initdir.
Introduce the ability to install the Modules initialization configuration files in the etcdir rather than in the initdir. A new configure option is introduced for this task: --with-initconf-in. Accepted values for this option are: etcdir or initdir (default).
Add the --enable-modulespath configure option, which is an alias for the --enable-dotmodulespath option as .modulespath configuration file is named modulespath when installed in etcdic.
Install: update RPM spec file to disable set_shell_startup option by default, set /etc/environment-modules as configuration directory and store Modules initialization configuration files in it.
Report an error when a module load or unload evaluation aborts due to the use of the break or exit modulefile commands. This error notification clarifies that module evaluation failed. (fix issue #267)
Remove the message block display output for the reload, purge and restore sub-commands to preserve this output style for modulefile evaluation modes (load, unload and switch) and thus clarify understanding.
When unloading a module that contains a module load or module switch modulefile command, inhibit the unload performed of the useless requirement when auto_handling mode is disabled if currently performing a purge, reload or restore sub-command. As the unload sequence is determined and managed from these top commands.
Add ability to control module command message verbosity with configuration option. Introduced verbosity levels from the least to the most verbose are silent, concise, normal, verbose and debug. This option could be set at ./configure time with --with-verbosity option. It could be superseded with the MODULES_VERBOSITY environment variable, that could be set with config module sub-command through the verbosity option. Silent, verbose and debug verbosity modes can be set at the command-line level respectively with --silent/-s, --verbose/-v and --debug/-D command-line switches. (fix issue #204)
When verbosity level is normal or higher, reports every module loads or unloads performed to restore a collection or source a scriptfile, even if there is no specific message to output for these module evaluations. Clarifies what module evaluations have been triggered by these sub-commands.
Also honor the CLICOLOR and CLICOLOR_FORCE environment variables to define color mode. (fix issue #279)

Modules 4.2.5 (2019-07-08)

Correctly escape ? character in shell alias. (fix issue #275)
When resolving the enabled list of modulepaths, ensure resolved path entries are unique. (fix issue #274)
Right trim '#' characters from the fetched modulefile magic cookie string to ensure a correct compatibility version comparison. Useful when modulefile first line is equal to #%Module4.2##############.
Fix argument parsing for the append-path, prepend-path and remove-path modulefile commands to consider every arguments found after the variable name as variable values and not command option even if argument starts with - character. (fix issue #278)
Fix automatic loading of modulefiles when multiple module names are set on a single module load modulefile command. When auto_handling mode was disabled, the load of not loaded modules was not achieved as soon as some modules on this list were already loaded. (fix issue #281)

Modules 4.2.4 (2019-04-26)

Better track each module evaluation and the context associated to it in order to report a more accurate information on the additional modules loaded or unloaded when proceeding the main evaluation request. (fix issue #244, #245, #246, #247 and #248)
Doc: preserve quotes and dashes when making HTML docs. (fix issue #250 with contribution from Riccardo Coccioli)
Fix hanging list sub-command when terminal width is equal to the single column text width to be printed. (contribution from Jesper Dahlberg)
During an additional evaluation triggered by an automated module handling mechanism, ensure warning and error messages are reported under the message block of the main evaluation. (fix issue #252)
During the unload of a module when the automated module handling mode is disabled, report a warning message for each unload of a useless requirement that fails as done when the automated module handling mode is enabled. (fix issue #253)
When multiple modules are listed on a prereq command, drop the output of those modules that fails to load (by the Requirement Load automated mechanism) to only keep the output of the module whose load succeed. (fix issue #254)
Fix switch sub-command when the switched-off module cannot be unloaded when other loaded modules depend on it. Whole switch process is failed and no load of the switched-on module is attempted. (fix issue #251)
When switching modules, report failure of switched-off module unload or switched-on module load under the message block of the switch action. A failed switched-off module unload is reported as an error, as it aborts the switch evaluation, whereas a failed switched-on module load is reported as a warning. (fix issue #255)
When a module requirement is seen missing but the load of this module was attempted, report a more specific error or warning message to let user understand that the load of the requirement was attempted but failed. (fix issue #257)
When loading a module, report any missing requirement on the message reporting block corresponding to this module load. This warning or error message comes in addition to the eventual Requirement Load message reported under the message block of the main evaluation. (fix issue #258)
When unloading a module which has some dependent module still loaded, produce a more specific error or warning message if an evaluation of these dependent modules has been realized or if the unload of the required module is forced. (fix issue #259)
When a conflicting module is seen loaded but the unload of this module was attempted, report a Conflict Unload error or warning message toward the main evaluation message block. (fix issue #261)
When loading a module, report any loaded conflict on the message reporting block corresponding to this module load. This warning or error message comes in addition to the eventual Conflict Unload message reported under the message block of the main evaluation. (fix issue #261)
Correctly report loading state of conflicting module. (fix issue #262)
Adapt warning, error and info messages relative to the Dependent Reload mechanism to distinguish the unload phase from the load (reload) phase of this mechanism. In the automated module handling summary report, unloaded modules via this mechanism are reported in the Unloading dependent list and modules reloaded afterward are reported against the Reloading dependent list. (fix issue #263)
When the automated module handling mode is disabled, do not attempt to load a requirement expressed in a modulefile with a module load command, if this requirement is already loaded or loading.
Skip load or unload evaluation of a module whose respectively load or unload was already attempted but failed. If this second evaluation attempt occurs within the same main evaluation frame. (fix issue #264)
When reloading modules through the Dependent Reload automated mechanism, prevent modules to automatically load of other modules with the module load modulefile command, as it is done for the prereq command. (fix issue #265)
Raise an error when an invalid option is set on append-path, prepend-path or remove-path modulefile command. (fix issue #249)
Zsh initializes by default the MANPATH environment variable to an empty value when it starts. To preserve manpath system configuration even after addition to this variable by modulefiles, set MANPATH variable to : if found empty. (improve fix for issue #224)
Doc: provide a short installation guideline in README file. (fix issue #230)

Modules 4.2.3 (2019-03-23)

Add all the module dependency-related internal information to those saved prior a modulefile evaluation in order to correctly restore internal state in case modulefile evaluation fails.
Init: in shell initialization scripts, initialize MANPATH if not set with a value that preserves manpath system configuration even after addition of paths to this variable by modulefiles. (fix issue#224)
Enable to define an entire path entry to the MODULEPATH variable which corresponds to a variable reference only. (fix issue#223)
Cookbook: add the modulefiles-in-git recipe. (contribution from Scott Johnson)
When module switch commands are found in modulefiles, track switched-off modulefile as a conflict and switched-to modulefile as a requirement to apply same behaviors than for module load and module unload commands in modulefiles. If module switch has only one argument, do not define a conflict toward switched-off modulefile. CAUTION: it is not recommended to use `module switch` command in modulefiles. (fix issue#229)
When unloading a module, revert module switch commands found in modulefile: switched-on module is converted to a module unload, like for module load command. Nothing is done for switched-off module, like for module unload command. (fix issue#226)
For default element in a modulefile directory which is a module alias that points to a modulefile, when this modulefile is loaded, it receives as alternative names the eventual module aliases set on the distant directory holding the alias pointing to it. (fix issue#231)
When unloading a module that contains module load or module switch commands in its modulefile, select for unload the automatically loaded requirement module which has been loaded prior its dependent. (fix issue#232)
Doc: describe Emacs settings useful for adhering to coding conventions in CONTRIBUTING guide. (fix issue #233 with contribution from Ben Bowers)
When looking for a loaded or loading dependency requirement, select among the eventual multiple candidates the closest match to the dependent module.
During the unload of a module, if the unload of one of its dependent (by the Dependent Unload mechanism) fails, abort the whole unload process. Exception made if the force mode is enabled. In this case failing module stays loaded and the Dependent Unload mechanism continues with next module to unload.
During the unload of a module, if the unload of one of its useless requirements (by the Useless Requirement Unload mechanism) fails, keep the requirements of this failing module loaded. Such error is reported as a warning and it does not stop the whole unload process. (fix issue#240)
During the load or the unload of a module, if the unload of one of its dependent (by the Dependent Reload mechanism) fails, abort the whole unload or load process. Exception made if the force mode is enabled. In this case failing module stays loaded and Dependent Reload mechanism continues with next module to unload. This failing module is removed from the Dependent Reload list, so it will not take part of the load phrase of the mechanism. (fix issue#239)
During the load or the unload of a module, if the load of one of its dependent (by the Dependent Reload mechanism) fails, abort the whole unload or load process. Exception made if the force mode is enabled. In this case failing module stays loaded and Dependent Reload mechanism continues with next module to load. When the mechanism is applied during a switch command, force mode is enabled by default on the load phase. (fix issue#241)
When reloading all loaded modules with the reload sub-command, if one reloading module fails to unload or load, abort the whole reload process to preserve environment sanity. (fix issue#237)
During the unload of a module when the automated module handling mode is disabled and this module declares its requirements with the module load modulefile command. If the unload of one of its useless requirements (by the Useless Requirement Unload mechanism) fails, whole unload process is not aborted and continue with next module to unload. (fix issue#238)
Contrib: add mtreview utility script that analyzes test suite log file to compare actual and expected output of failed test. mt does not output the full test suite logs anymore but only the information produced by mtreview on failed tests.
Install: exclude Continuous Integration configurations from dist tarballs.

Modules 4.2.2 (2019-02-17)

Correct the Dependent Unload mechanism when it triggers the unload of 2 modules making together a requirement from another module. This module is now also added to the dependent modules to unload.
Doc: add a cookbook section in the documentation and port there the 3 pre-existing recipes: inhibit-report-info, top-priority-values and unload-firstly-loaded.
Doc: add a CONTRIBUTING guide.
Doc: fix a typo on the Python initialization example in module man page.
Doc: add a FAQ entry to describe the use of module from Makefile. (with contribution from Robert McLay)
Trim any white-space, newline or ; characters at the beginning or end of the function body passed to set-function modulefile command.
Init: add recognition of the --auto, --no-auto and --force command-line switches in fish shell completion script.
Init: add recognition of the --auto, --no-auto, --force, --paginate and --no-pager command-line switches in zsh shell completion script.
When the load of a modulefile is asked but a conflict is registered against this modulefile by an already loaded module, the load evaluation is now performed and the conflict is checked after this evaluation. If the conflict is still there, this evaluation (and the evaluation of its requirements) is rolled back. (fix issue#216)
Init: fix _module_not_yet_loaded alias in tcsh completion script to handle situation when noclobber variable is set. Also ensure actual rm command is called and not an alias. (fix issue#219)
Fix warning message when the load of a modulefile is forced over a reflexive conflict (message was reported twice).
When looking at the dependency of a loaded module, only consider requirement loaded before dependent module (holding a prior position in the loaded module list) as valid. Those loaded after dependent module are considered as an unmet dependency thus they are not taking part in the Dependent Unload, the Useless Requirement Unload and the Dependent Reload mechanisms.

Modules 4.2.1 (2018-11-11)

Cookbook: add the inhibit-report-info recipe.
Cookbook: port unload-firstly-loaded and top-priority-values recipes to v4.2.
Init: fix listing of loaded modules for fish and tcsh shell completions.
Init: fix saved collection listing when no collection found for bash, zsh, tcsh and fish shell completions.
Adapt system modulefile Tcl command to execute the command passed as argument through shell, like it is performed on compatibility version. (fix issue#205)
Correctly filter modulefile search memory cache entries when using a full search result to search later on a specific modulefile.
Prefix debug messages by information on the current modulefile or modulerc interpreter if any.
Init: fix listing of loaded modules on unload and switch sub-commands for bash shell completion.
Refrain module unload modulefile command from unloading a module required by another loading module.
Enable is-loaded modulefile Tcl command in modulerc interpretation context, like done on compatibility version. (fix issue#207)
Check a required module is not already loading before attempting to load it. Helps to handle cyclic dependencies.
Compute loaded modules requirement dependency relations without cycle and consider the module closing the cycle in a constraint violation state to avoid reloading loops on the Dependent Reload mechanism.
Safely unset dependency reference when computing dependency relations as some dependencies expressed may target same module.
Ensure a loaded module matching multiple entries of a same or prereq will just be considered as one module matching this requirement.
Init: quote prompt in csh and tcsh script with :q rather double quotes to accommodate prompts with embedded newlines. (fix issue#209 with contribution from Satya Mishra)
Init: skip shell environment alteration if autoinit command fails. (fix issue#208)
Reword path-like variable element counter reference handling to simply ignore the counter values not coherent with the content of related path-like variable. (fix issue#206)

Modules 4.2.0 (2018-10-18)

Add chdir and puts environment settings to the per-modulefile evaluation saved context. So previous values of these settings are restored in case of evaluation failure.
Fix save and restore of x-resource environment settings on the per-modulefile evaluation context.
Use the correct warning procedure to report the full reference counter inconsistency message (so this message is fully inhibited during global whatis evaluations).
Make append-path, prepend-path, remove-path and unsetenv commands alter env Tcl global array during display, help, test or whatis evaluation modes. Thus an invalid argument passed to these commands will now raise error on these modes. (see :ref:`v42-variable-change-through-modulefile-evaluation` section in MIGRATING document)
On whatis mode, append-path, prepend-path, remove-path, setenv and unsetenv commands initialize variables if undefined but do not set them to their accurate value for performance concern.
Clear value instead of unsetting it during an unload mode evaluation of setenv or *-path commands to avoid breaking later reference to the variable in modulefile.
Make getenv command returns value on help, test or whatis evaluation modes. (fix issue#188)
Add an argument to the getenv command to return the value of this argument if the queried variable is undefined.
Use a different modulefile interpreter for each evaluation mode.
Adapt the procedure called for each modulefile command depending on the evaluation mode to adapt behavior of these commands to the module command currently running.
Report calling name and arguments for modulefile commands on display mode. For the commands evaluated during this mode, trigger this report at the end of the evaluation.
Inhibit chdir, conflict, module, module-log, module-trace, module-user, module-verbosity, prereq, set-alias, system, unset-alias, x-resource commands on help, test and whatis evaluation modes.
Ignore chdir, module, module-trace, module-verbosity, module-user and module-log commands found during modulerc evaluation.
Correctly restore an empty string value on sub-interpreter global variables when sanitizing this interpreter between two modulefile/modulerc evaluations.
Cache in memory results of a modulefile search to reuse it in case of rerun instead of re-walking the filesystem.
Evaluate global rc files once module sub-command is known and registered, so it can be queried during their evaluation.
Rename _moduleraw shell function in _module_raw to use a common _module_ prefix for all module-related internal shell functions.
Install: add --enable-append-binpath and --enable-append-binpath configure options to append rather prepend the bin or man directory when adding them to the relative environment variable.
Doc: clarify documentation for module usage on scripting language like Perl or Python to mention that arguments to the module function should be passed as list and not as a single string.
When interpreting a setenv modulefile order during an unload evaluation, variable is still set to be unset in generated shell code but it is set to the value defined on the setenv order in the interpreter context instead of being cleared.
Register the conflicts defined by loaded modules in the environment (variable MODULES_LMCONFLICT) and ensure they keep satisfied. (see :ref:`v42-conflict-constraints-consistency` section in MIGRATING document)
Register the prereqs defined by loaded modules in the environment (variable MODULES_LMPREREQ) and ensure they keep satisfied. (see :ref:`v42-prereq-constraints-consistency` section in MIGRATING document)
Introduce the automated module handling mode, which consists in additional actions triggered when loading or unloading a modulefile to satisfy the dependency constraints it declares. Those actions are when loading a modulefile: the Requirement Load and the Dependent Reload. When unloading a modulefile, Dependent Unload, Useless Requirement Unload and Dependent Reload actions are triggered. (see :ref:`v42-automated-module-handling-mode` section in MIGRATING document)
Track the loaded modules that have been automatically loaded (with environment variable MODULES_LMNOTUASKED) to distinguish them from modules that have been explicitly asked by user. This information helps to determine what module becomes a useless requirement once all its dependent modules are unloaded.
Track in saved collections the loaded modules that have been automatically loaded by add of a --notuasked argument to module load collection lines. So this information is restored in loaded environment when collection is restored. This --notuasked argument is ignored outside of a collection restore context.
Consider modules loaded from a module source file as explicitly asked by user.
Install: add --enable-auto-handling configure option to enable or disable the automatic modulefile handling mechanism.
Process list of loaded modules or modules to load one by one during the restore, purge and reload sub-commands whatever the auto handling mode is.
Add the ability to control whether the auto_handling mode should be enabled or disabled with an environment variable called MODULES_AUTO_HANDLING or from the command-line with --auto and --no-auto switches. These command-line switches are ignored when called from modulefile.
Init: add pager-related command-line options in shell completion scripts.
Doc: describe MODULES_LMCONFLICT, MODULES_LMPREREQ and MODULES_LMNOTUASKED in module.1 man page.
Add -f and --force command-line switches to by-pass dependency consistency during load, unload or switch sub-commands. (see :ref:`v42-by-passing-module-constraints` section in MIGRATING document)
Disallow collection save or loaded modules reload if some loaded modules have some of their dependency constraints unsatisfied.
The Dependent Reload action of a load, unload and switch sub-commands excludes modules that have unsatisfied constraints and includes modules whose constraints are satisfied again (when sub-command process solves a conflict for instance).
Doc: describe --force, --auto and --no-auto command-line switches and MODULES_AUTO_HANDLING variable in module.1 man page.
Ignore directories .SYNC (DesignSync) and .sos (SOS) when walking through modulepath directory content. (contribution from Colin Marquardt)
Install: look for make rather gmake on MSYS2.
Fix exec() usage in Python module function definition to retrieve the correct return status on Python3.
Cookbook: add the top-priority-values and unload-firstly-loaded recipes.
Install: add gcc to the build requirements in RPM specfile.
Silent any prereq violation warning message when processing Dependent Reload mechanism or purge sub-command.
Doc: mention createmodule.sh and createmodule.py scripts in FAQ. (fix issue#189)
Register all alternative names of loaded modules in environment with MODULES_LMALTNAME variable. These names correspond to the symbolic versions and aliases resolving to the loaded modules. Helps to consistenly solve conflict or prereq constraints set over these alternative names. (fix issue#143 / see :ref:`v42-consistency-module-load-unload-commands` section in MIGRATING document)
Doc: describe MODULES_LMALTNAME in module.1 man page.
Install: add --with-bin-search-path configure option to get in control of the path list used to search the tools required to build and configure Modules. (fix issue#164)
Install: add --enable-silent-shell-debug-support configure option to add the ability to control whether or not code to support silent shell debug should be added to the module function and sh-kind initialization scripts. (fix issue#166)
Install: add --enable-quarantine-support configure option to add the ability to control whether or not code to support quarantine mechanism should be added to the module function and initialization scripts. (fix issue#167)
Check version set in modulefile magic cookie. If modulefile sets a version number greater than modulecmd.tcl script version, this modulefile is not evaluated like when no magic cookie is set at all. (fix issue#171 / see :ref:`v42-versioned-magic-cookie` section in MIGRATING document)
Fix uninitialized variable in procedure producing list of element output. (fix issue#195)
Ensure the consistency of module load modulefile command once the modulefile defining it has been loaded by assimilating this command to a prereq command. Thus the defined constraint is recorded in the MODULES_LMPREREQ environment variable. Same approach is used for module unload modulefile command which is assimilated to a conflict command. Thus the defined constraint is recorded in the MODULES_LMCONFLICT environment variable. (see :ref:`v42-alias-symbolic-name-consistency` section in MIGRATING document)
Only look at loaded modules when unloading so unloading an nonexistent modulefile does not produce an error anymore. (fix issue#199)
Report error raised from modulefile evaluation as ERROR rather WARNING, like when a conflict constraint is hit. Moreover this kind of evaluation error is now silenced on global evaluation like when proceding avail or search sub-commands.
Record messages to report them by block on when processing a load or an unload modulefile evaluation to improve readability on these evaluating modes that may cascade additional actions. (see :ref:`v42-module-message-report` section in MIGRATING document)
Foreground load, unload, switch and restore actions (ie. asked on the command-line) now report a summary of the additional load and unload evaluations that were eventually triggered in the process.
Support del and remove aliases for unload sub-command like on compatibility version. (fix issue#200 with contribution from Wenzler)
Correctly transmit the arguments along with the command to execute on system modulefile command. (fix issue#201)
Contrib: add mt utility script which helps to run just specific part of the test suite.
Introduce set-function and unset-function modulefile commands to define shell function on sh-kind and fish shells. (fix issue#193 with contribution from Ben Bowers)

Modules 4.1.4 (2018-08-20)

Doc: fix typo on getenv command description in modulefile(4) man page and clarify this command should be preferred over ::env variable to query environment variable value in modulefile.
Init: fix bash and zsh completion scripts to enable Extended Regular Expression (ERE) on sed command with -E argument (rather -r) for compatibility with OS X's and BSDs' sed. (fix issue#178)
Handle default version sets on an hidden modulefile (were not found previously). (fix issue#177)
Init: fix ksh initialization script for ksh88 compatibility. (fix issue#159)
Install: use sed command rather grep and cut in configure and Makefile scripts. (fix issue#175 with contribution from Michael Sternberg)
Fix typo, tab indentation and pipe opening mode on createmodule.py utility script. (contribution from Jan Synacek)
Check ModulesVersion value set from .version rc file to ensure this value refers to a version name in current directory. Report error if a nested value is detected and ignore this value. (fix issue#176)

Modules 4.1.3 (2018-06-18)

Make setenv command alter env Tcl global array during help, test or whatis evaluation modes. (fix issue#160)
Doc: describe MANPATH variable special treatment on compatibility version in diff_v3_v4 document.
Initialize and export _moduleraw SH shell function if stderr is attached to a terminal. Was previously checking stdout. (fix issue#169)
For csh shells, quote code generated by modulecmd.tcl to pass it to the eval shell command.
Escape special characters when producing code to define shell aliases (fix issue#165)
Correct modulefile lookup when a modulefile directory is overwritten by a module alias definition but it contains an empty sub-directory. (fix issue#170)
Doc: describe getenv command in modulefile(4) man page.
Improve SH shell detection in profile.sh initialization script to use shell variable on bash or zsh to determine current shell name. (fix issue#173)

Modules 4.1.2 (2018-03-31)

Add an example global rc file in contrib/etc directory that ensures MODULEPATH is always defined.
Check HOME environment variable is defined on savelist and is-saved commands or raise error if not.
Fix saving of deep module default version in collection when version pinning is disabled: if foo/bar/version is default version for foo, collection will retain just foo (was retaining foo/bar).
Enable to save and restore collections containing full path modulefiles eventually with no modulepath defined.
Run puts command not related to stderr or stdout channels in calling modulefile context to correctly get access to the targeted file channel. (fix issue#157)
Quote autoinit result for eval interpretation on SH-kind shells to avoid parameter expansion to randomly occur on generated code depending on file or directory names of current working directory. (fix RH bug#1549664)
Ignore empty elements found in MODULEPATH, LOADEDMODULES or _LMFILES_ to ensure all elements in these variables are non-empty strings.
Raise error if loaded environment is in an inconsistent state when calling commands requiring correlation of information from the LOADEDMODULES and the _LMFILES_ environment variables. Error raised on load, unload, switch, reload, purge, list, save and restore commands. May affect info-loaded or is-loaded commands if module passed as argument to these command is specified as a full path modulefile.
Fix list command to process loaded modules information before performing any content output.
Install: adapt configure script and Makefiles to support installation on Cygwin system.
Detect terminal width on Windows cmd terminal with mode command.
Improve Windows cmd shell support: error code returned, echoing text, shell alias creation and removal, working directory change.
Raise error when an empty module name is passed to module sub-commands like load, display or unload.
Raise error when an empty collection name is passed to module sub-commands like save, saveshow or restore.
Raise error when an empty path is passed to module unuse sub-command, like already done on use sub-command.
Clear argument list if an empty module command name is passed.
Fix module function definition for all shells in autoinit command to correctly handle empty-string parameters or parameters containing white-spaces, quotes, escape characters.
Fix module function definition for Python to accept being called with no argument.
Fix parameter expansion on module function for all SH-kind shells when quarantine mode is activated.
Escape \ character when producing R shell code.

Modules 4.1.1 (2018-02-17)

Make separator lines, used on display command result for instance, fit small screen width.
Install: give ability to build and install Modules from git repository without documentation if sphinx-build cannot be found.
Install: adapt configure script and Makefiles to support installation on FreeBSD, Solaris and OS X systems. (fix issue#147)
Rework code generated by autoinit for sh-kind shells to avoid use of local variables as those are defined differently through the sh variants. (also fix issue#147)
Init: use a default value on undefined variables in sh-kind scripts to avoid unbound variables in bash -eu mode. (fix issue#151)
Correctly detect terminal column number on Solaris.
Init: fix csh init script to get compatibility with pure csh shell
Sanitize content of MODULEPATH before using it at run-time, to make potential relative paths absolute, remove trailing slashes, etc. (fix issue#152)
Check loaded modulefiles still exists before displaying statistics on them during a list action.
Use a specific reference counter variable name (MODULES_MODSHARE_<VAR> instead of <VAR>_modshare) for DYLD-specific variables. (fix issue#153)
No error raise when updating a DYLD or LD path-like variable on OS X when System Integrity Protection (SIP) is enabled. In this situation, these variables are not exported in subshell context, so they appear undefined.
Init: protect arguments passed to the _moduleraw sh function from interfering content of current working directory. (fix issue#154)
Install: move hostname RPM requirement to the compat sub-package.
Start pager process only if some text has to be printed. (partially fix issue#146)
Ignore PAGER environment variable to configure Modules pager to avoid side effects coming from a general pager configuration not compatible with Modules pager handling. (fix issue#146)
Do not blank anymore default Modules pager options if default pager is less when the LESS environment variable is defined. (fix issue#146)

Warning

With this bugfix release, changes have been made on the pager setup to avoid side effects coming from the system general pager configuration. As a result PAGER environment variable is now ignored and MODULES_PAGER should be used instead to adapt Modules pager configuration at run-time.

Modules 4.1.0 (2018-01-15)

Extend stderr output redirection on sh-kind shells to all terminal-attached shell session, not only interactive shell session.
Extend shell code produced by the autoinit command to perform the same environment initialization as done in init shell scripts (default value set for module-specific environment variables, parse or source of configuration files).
Make init shell scripts rely on autoinit command to define the module command and setup its default environment.
Fix error rendering code for Tcl shell by producing a call to the error procedure.
Introduce pager support to handle informational messages, using less command with -eFKRX options by default. Environment variable MODULES_PAGER or PAGER may be used to supersede default pager command and options. --paginate and --no-pager switches enable or disable pager from the command line.
Install: add --with-pager and --with-pager-opts configure options to define default pager command and its relative command-line options.
Introduce quarantine mechanism to protect module execution against side effect coming from the current environment definition. Variables whose name has been put in MODULES_RUN_QUARANTINE will be emptied or set to the value hold by MODULES_RUNENV_<VAR> in the modulecmd.tcl run-time environment. Quarantine variable original value is then restored within modulecmd.tcl execution context once it has started.
Install: add --with-quarantine-vars configure option to define at build time the MODULES_RUN_QUARANTINE and MODULES_RUNENV_<VAR> environment variables set in initialization scripts.
Add MODULES_SILENT_SHELL_DEBUG environment variable to disable on sh shell and derivatives any xtrace or verbose debugging property for the duration of either the module command or the module shell initialization script. (fix issue#121)
Change error code produced by modulecmd.tcl for the Tcl, Perl, Python, Ruby, CMake and R scripting languages to return a 'false' boolean value in case of error rather raising a fatal exception.
Adapt module function definition for Tcl, Perl, Python, Ruby, CMake and R scripting languages to always return a value, result of the modulecmd.tcl run. When modulecmd.tcl run does not produce a specific status, a 'true' boolean value is returned. On CMake, resulting value is returned though a module_result global variable.
Spool content sent to the stdout channel with puts command during a modulefile interpretation, to effectively transmit this content to stdout after rendering the environment changes made by this modulefile. (fix issue#113)
Introduce append-path, prepend-path, remove-path and is-loaded module sub-commands, based on existing modulefile-specific Tcl commands. (fix issue#116)
Introduce is-saved, is-used and is-avail modulefile Tcl commands and module sub-commands to test availability of collection, modulepath or modulefile.
Raise error when a call to path or paths module sub-commands is attempted during a modulefile interpretation. Both commands now return text rather print text on scripting languages. An empty string is returned in no match case instead of a false boolean value.
Introduce module-info loaded modulefile command and its module sub-command counterpart info-loaded. This new command returns name of the modules currently loaded corresponding to the name passed as argument. (fix issue#3)
Fix is-loaded command to correctly handle multiple module names passed as argument (fix issue#138)
Support no argument on is-loaded, is-saved and is-used commands to return if anything is respectively loaded, saved or used.
Interpret module source command set in modulefile in unload mode when the modulefile itself is interpreted in this mode.
Consider a modulefile passed with name starting by ./ or ../ a full path name modulefile, like those starting by /. These kind of names are converted to absolute path names, for instance to register them in loaded modulefile list during a load command.
Correlate modulefile passed as full path name (starting by either ./, ../ or /) to already loaded modulefile registered with regular module name (file name without its modulepath prefix) to prevent for instance from loading twice same modulefile. Correlate in the same way regular module name to already loaded full path name modulefile.
Introduce MODULES_COLLECTION_PIN_VERSION environment variable to record modulefile version number when saving collections even if version corresponds to the default one. (fix issue#89)
Fix location of etc/rc global RC file to @prefix@/etc/rc instead of $MODULESHOME/etc/rc not to depend on MODULESHOME environment variable value.
Strengthen argument check for append-path, prepend-path and remove-path modulefile Tcl commands and module sub-commands. Raise error if argument list is not correct.
Fix support for the --delim=C argument form on append-path, prepend-path and remove-path commands.
Fix path reference counter handling in case path element is an empty string. Distinguish an empty path element from a variable set empty to clear it.
Pass multiple path elements separated by delimiter character as one string on append-path, prepend-path and remove-path commands.
Accept multiple path element arguments on append-path, prepend-path and remove-path commands.
Introduce the --duplicates argument option to append-path and prepend-path commands to add a path element already registered in variable.
Introduce the --index argument option to remove-path command to delete a path entry by passing its position index in variable.
Provide the ability to setup a site-specific configuration sourced at the start of modulecmd.tcl main procedure. This configuration is a Tcl script named siteconfig.tcl which enables to supersede any Tcl definition made in modulecmd.tcl. Location of this file is controlled at configure time with the --etcdir option.
Add the ability to handle paths containing reference to environment variable in MODULEPATH. When these kind of paths are used by module command, the variable references are converted to their corresponding value or to an empty string if they are not defined.
Enclose value set to environment variable on Tcl within curly braces rather double quotes to protect special characters in it from interpretation.
Correctly parse .modulespath initialization file to handle lines without any # character or to handle files with no content to extract.
Re-introduce the --enable-versioning configure option, which appends Modules version to installation prefix and deploy a versions modulepath shared between all versioning enabled Modules installation. A modulefile corresponding to Modules version is added to the shared modulepath and enables to switch from one Modules version to another.
Fix removal of CMake generated temporary script file by stripping newline character from script file name.
Add MODULES_CMD environment variable to expose path to the currently active module command script. This variable is set at initialization time.
Introduce modulecmd wrapper script, installed in binary directory, which executes the active module command.
Fix modulefile Tcl interpreter reset when handling list variables. (fix issue#145)
Introduce 'module-virtual' modulefile Tcl command to associate a virtual module name to a modulefile. This module can be located with its virtual name and the associated modulefile is the script interpreted when loading, unloading, etc.
Resolution of relative paths occurring during a modulefile interpretation to target a modulefile or a modulepath now takes the directory of the currently interpreted modulefile as the current working directory to solve the relative paths.

Modules 4.0.0 (2017-10-16)

Starting with this release, modules-tcl has become Modules. The following changes describe the differences with last modules-tcl release (1.923). To learn about the changes between this release and last Modules 3.2 release, please see the :ref:`MIGRATING` document.

Relax constraint on command-line argument position so options and switches can be passed either before or after command name.
Report unsupported option warning rather stop on error when compatibility-version specific command-line switches are passed ( --force, --human, --verbose, --silent, --create, --icase, --userlvl).
Keep empty module load line in shell configuration files after running the initrm or initclear commands.
Always return the value of tcl_platform(osVersion) for uname release
Optimize code output, for Perl to only return 1; once for a no-operation situation and for Python to not import os when there is only an error to render.
Use value of system command uname -n for uname nodename.
Add support for CMake shell
Ignore / character used as suffix in modulefile name passed on command line.
Rename Perl initialization script in perl.pm and Python in python.py.
Add support for Ruby shell (with contribution from Tammo Tjarks)
Add support for R shell (with contribution from Roy Storey)
When a default is set for a given module name, target modulefile can be referred on as modulename/default in addition to just modulename.
Locate symbolic versions on avail command even these symbols are set over a module alias or another symbolic version. In this situation the symbol spread along the resolution path until reaching a modulefile.
Define a more standard shebang on modulecmd.tcl script.
Determine modulefile corresponding to given module name using the loaded context only on unload situation.
Enable to unload mod/dir/subdir/vers when unload of mod or mod/dir asked. Was previously working only if deep module to unload was also the default version for these root names.
Make -l/-t switches mutually exclusive. Last switch mentioned on the command-line is honored.
Output parsable modulepath header when -l/-t switches are enabled.
When searching for a module in a given modulepath directory, if a module alias or a symbolic version matches searched module but the target of this alias or symbol is not found in current modulepath directory, search for this target restarting search from the first modulepath in list to ensure modulepath priority.
Solve aliases or symbolic versions looking for all modulepaths on search and paths commands. Was previously solved if their target was found in same modulepath directory.
Add support for hidden dot modulefiles. A hidden modulefile does not appear in case of wild search, it is only returned when search is about its exact name.
No table header print in --long mode on an avail command if no result are returned.
Add blank line between displayed list of elements, for instance between modulepath content on avail command.
Improve readability of error messages encountered during modulefile execution by putting Tcl error message first after the Module ERROR prefix.
Do not exit immediately when an internal error occurs in currently interpreted modulefile. Consider this interpretation as failed and continue to proceed the other modulefile arguments.
When multiple modulefiles are passed on display, help and test commands only output one separator line between 2 interpreted modulefiles.
Fix environment settings stack handling issue when restoring stack after a failed attempt to load a modulefile in a modulefile.
Failed attempt to load or unload a modulefile within a modulefile now leads to this upper modulefile load or unload failure. Previously upper modulefile were loaded respectively unloaded even if its dependent sub-modulefile failed to load or unload.
During a switch command, if the unloading part fails the loading part will not be tried. Unloading part fails if module to unload does not exist or its unload interpretation raise error.
Init: use module source rather shell command source to load modulerc system configuration in sh-kind, csh-kind and fish shell init scripts.
Install: transform configuration options to bind to an existing compatibility Modules version into option (--enable-compat-version) to build and install this compatibility version along with main version.
Init: adapt initialization scripts to handle both main and compatibility version. By default a shell script enables main version and if the environment variable MODULES_USE_COMPAT_VERSION is set to 1, the compatibility version is enabled instead of main version.
Install: import from compatibility version and install add.modules and mkroot utility scripts (scripts developed by R.K. Owen).
Install: update RPM spec file to handle compatibility version as a compat sub-package.
Add completion script for Fish shell (contribution from BEFH).
Doc: extend content of diff_v3_v4 to details all noticeable changes between v3.2 and v4.0.
Doc: introduce MIGRATING guide to learn the major changes when moving from v3.2 to v4.0.
Fix list command when full pathname modulefile is loaded (fix bug#132)
Install: handle version number though git tags in scripts, documentation and RPM spec file.
Doc: migrate documents from POD format to reStructuredText to benefit from Sphinx documentation framework and Read The Docs publishing capabilities.

Above changes describe the differences with modules-tcl release 1.923. To learn about the changes between Modules 4.0 and last Modules 3.2 release, please see the :ref:`MIGRATING` document.

modules-tcl-1.923 (2017-07-20)

Fix aliases command when a global or user RC file is set.
Find and solve global or user RC aliases and symbolic versions on search, whatis and paths commands.
Do not look at currently loaded modules to resolve the target of a module alias.
Rework default and latest versions search on avail command. Correct display when at a given level a sub-directory element is last element in directory among modulefiles. Previously sub-directory was printed but last file among modulefiles was also printed (2 latest versions at the same level). A directory tagged "default" does not appear anymore in default listing result as its content (the default version found in that directory) will be displayed.
When an alias is set and overrides name of an existing directory, take this alias into account for default and latest choice and ignore directory content.
Bad default set will lead to no result displayed for the corresponding module in case of default avail display.
Correct inclusion of aliases in output result when these aliases are not part of the exact same module path than module path of the search.
Rewrite existing shell initialization file with initadd, initprepend, initswitch, initrm and initclear commands rather than writing a new file then copying this new file to replace the existing initialization file. In addition only re-writes shell initialization file if its content need to be altered.
Raise an error on initadd, initprepend, initswitch, initrm and initclear commands when no module load line are found in shell initialization file.
Normalize error messages for the various collection-related commands when collection cannot be accessed.
Cleanup existing reference counters of a path list variable when this variable is altered by a setenv or an unsetenv command.
Init: do not pollute tab-completion with moduleraw command. (Bert Wesarg)
Make use of the same Tcl interp for each modulefile interpretation and use another one for each modulerc (but the same for each modulerc). By doing so we proceed like on C-version where same interpreter is used across modulefile or modulerc interpretation. Huge performance improvement is achieved with this change on commands making intensive use of interp like avail. Interpreter state is reset from one interpretation to another: the initial variable and procedure state is restored before each new interpretation to avoid spread of definitions from one interpretation to another. Also in case of nested interpretation each interpretation level has its own interpreter so a module loaded by another does not influence the interpretation of the module loading it.
Improve performance of aliases and symbolic versions resolution by computing these resolution at definition time. As a consequence resolution loop are not registered anymore and produce an error message when spotted not at display time.
Reduce number of access system call by trying access to modulefile when reading the content of a modulefile directory rather testing access before trying it.
No error raise on empty argument list for load. To cope with initadd behavior that requires at least an empty module load line in startup files. (fix SF bug#88)
Fix initadd to handle load line without trailing space. Was previously expecting load directive to be written "module load " to get a match. With fix, module load line will also be matched.
Like C-version catch raised error when break or continue are called from outside of a loop to handle them as when they are called from modulefile main body. (fix SF bug#87)
Return error on module use command when an empty path string is provided rather ignoring it.
Workaround min and max functions and lreverse procedure for correct operations under Tcl version 8.4.
Install: add --with-tclsh configure option to give the ability to choose the Tcl interpreter shell to setup in initialization scripts.
Handle error raised from the ModulesDisplay, ModulesHelp and ModulesTest procedures in the same way than for the evaluation of the modulefile content. An error occurring during the evaluation of the modulefile content will lead to no evaluation of the display, help and test command specific functions.
Remove debug module command
Doc: describe path, paths and autoinit module command.
Correct use of xrdb tool when not installed in default path.
Fix init* module commands to behave more like C-version and document remaining differences in diff_with_c-version.
Init: make sh init script closer to POSIX specification to support sh flavors different than Bash or Zsh like Dash.
Fix column-mode display for very short width terminal.
Install: introduce an install non-regression testsuite which is triggered by the make testinstall command and checks modules-tcl installation is operational.
Init: fix modulerc load test on fish init script.
Init: fix interactive shell test on sh init script.
Install: add --enable-example-modulefiles configure option that install by default some modulefiles provided as example in the system modulefiles directory.
Install: when uninstalling, do not remove modulefiles directory if it is not empty.
Add completion script for Zsh shell.
Add module test command to trigger when called execution of a ModulesTest procedure in target modulefile following same kind of mechanism than module help.

modules-tcl-1.832 (2017-04-29)

Fix getenv sub-command to correctly return environment variable value.
Clarify in man-pages display of module alias and symbolic version-name on avail command and management of file access issue when locating modulefiles.
Distinguish access issue (permission denied) from find issue (cannot locate) when trying to access directly a directory or a modulefile as done on load, display or whatis commands. In addition on this kind of access, not readable .modulerc files are ignored rather producing a missing magic cookie error.
When mode is set to unload, module load commands in modulefile are interpreted as module unload commands. To guaranty correct behavior regarding requirements, the module list passed to the load command is reversed to unload the modulefiles in the reverse order than they have been loaded.
Correct display command to only report module commands set in modulefile and not those set in the various .modulerc on the path toward this modulefile.
Fix bash and tcsh completion scripts to eliminate symbolic version names from avail command result.
Improve avail command when a symbolic version-name is passed as argument to return the modulefile target of this symbolic version-name.
When looking for an implicit default in a directory, now a module alias is taken into account so it can be returned as the last element in it (highest numerically sorted version).
Fix list command to correctly display the default tag along loaded modules when set via a .version file.
Fix long output of list command to display the symbolic version-names associated to each loaded module if any.
Improve avail command to return alias module when an alias name is passed as argument.
On a --default listing, a modulefile does not appear anymore if a directory is set default at the same level. On a --latest listing, a directory does not appear anymore if set default but not the latest.
Read modulerc and validate its header in a single open/read/close sequence instead of two in order to reduce to number of IO operations during an avail command.
Drastically reduce grid size computation time which removes overhead when displaying module avail results in column-mode.
Translate module name to currently interpreted module name when name correspond to the last part this interpreted module only in case of symbolic version-name or alias resolution.
Avoid resetting regular path (/usr/bin) or manpath (/usr/share/man) when switching from Tcl to C version in switchml utility.
Raise error on x-resource if DISPLAY environment variable is not set.
Fix lisp init script which was broken for environment change actions.

modules-tcl-1.775 (2017-03-07)

Improve README with examples, requirements, links, etc. Also update INSTALL documentation with details on the new configure/make/make install process.
Add display of a release date next to the version number when calling for --help or --version.
Update diff_with_c-version document to describe the features of the Tcl-version that are not supported on the C-version. Also state that the diff takes C version 3.2.10 against Tcl version 1.729 as a basis.
Introduce switchml tool, a shell function (or alias for csh or tcsh shells) that swap currently enabled Modules version (C or Tcl) by the other version (C or Tcl). Configure option --with-cver-initdir must be defined to enable switchml in initialization script.
Define a PATH and MANPATH in shell initialization scripts that point to the defined modules-tcl installation directories.
Give ability to generate distribution tarball from the git repository with Makefile dist target.
Introduce an installation process for this software following the configure/make/make install fashion. Configure step enables to choose installation paths and init scripts features to activate. Make step mainly translates init scripts with the configuration set. Make install creates target directories and copy files into them.
Fix MODULESHOME setup in autoinit command to define it as an absolute path and set it to the upper directory when modulecmd.tcl is located in a bin or a libexec directory.
Correct alias and version resolution on avail command which was erroneous in case of a modulefile holding symbols (like default) and targeted by aliases. Avail output was showing the aliases holding the symbols instead of the modulefile.

modules-tcl-1.729 (2017-02-01)

Add documentation in module(1) man page on the modulefile collection concept and the relative save, restore, saverm, saveshow and savelist commands.
Add document to list the differences of the functionalities that can be found on the C-version of the Modules package compared to the Tcl-version.
Improve modulecmd.tcl shebang to only search tclsh once if found in PATH.
Add module-info mode check against remove and switch values.
Introduce module-info command Modules-specific Tcl command to distinguish complex load or unload commands that cannot be determined with module-info mode alone. For instance a modulefile can now be aware that a switch, a restore or a purge command is currently being run.
Enable usage of module-info Modules-specific Tcl command from a modulerc file.
Fix module-info specified Modules-specific Tcl command.
No exit raise on modulefile or modulerc error during avail, aliases, whatis and search commands to avoid harming results from these global commands if error exists in a few modulefiles.
Exit with error code when a critical error is encountered when interpreting a modulefile or a modulerc.
Inhibit non-critical error report raised from modulefiles during avail, aliases, whatis and search commands to avoid error flood when parsing all modulefiles or modulercs.
Handle multiple lines of module-whatis Modules-specific Tcl commands defined for the same modulefile.
Handle multiple arguments passed to the module-whatis Modules-specific Tcl commands. They are joined to get a single line of text.
Return error on whatis command if searched modulefile is not found.

modules-tcl-1.704 (2017-01-20)

Set path variable counter to 1 for paths without a known reference count (was previously set to 999999999).
Introduce envml utility which acts as an application launcher where module commands are instantiated to setup environment before launching the given application.
Always register paths provided to be part of MODULEPATH environment variable as absolute paths to get independent from the current working directory.
Inhibit next modulefiles interpretation with exit Modules-specific Tcl command only if current mode is load.
Add argument to module-info shell and module-info shelltype to test current shell or shelltype value.
Fix use of default version-name to not consider it as a module symbol if a modulefile is named default.
Fix path variable counters when : character is used in elements of a path-like variable.
Update module(1) and modulefile(4) man pages to clear content specific to the C version of Modules and add content specific to or adapt content that behave differently on this Tcl version.
Fix TCLSH variable issue in Python init script.

modules-tcl-1.677 (2017-01-04)

Make switch command handle a single argument. The modulefile to switch to is the one passed on the command-line and the modulefile to unload is assumed to be the currently loaded module with the same root name as this modulefile specified on the command-line.
Make switch command idempotent by always ending up with old unloaded and new loaded, whatever the starting situation is.
Fix exit Modules-specific Tcl command.
Add refresh command as alias on reload command.
Add dummy module-log, module-trace, module-user and module-verbosity Modules-specific Tcl commands to enable support for modulefiles using them.
Fix system Modules-specific Tcl command to behave like described on the man page.
Fix module list when module loaded with full path
Disable g_force property by default to avoid loading a modulefile already loaded. It also avoids path element reference counting to get increased when the same module is asked twice for load.
Clarify module-info mode option and set help mode on module help command.
Clarify module-info flags and user options.
Handle empty or separator path on add-path ad unload-path commands.
Delete environment variable targeted by an unsetenv command on unload mode if no value has been provided along. On display mode, print environment variable value if any has been passed to unsetenv command.
When setting Tcl variable, enclose value within double quotes.
Fix perl quoting style for variable set, escape single quotes rather double quotes.
Call unuse command instead of use command on a module unload.
Fix continue Modules-specific Tcl command.
Add chdir Modules-specific Tcl command.
Fix break Modules-specific Tcl command.

modules-tcl-1.655 (2016-11-23)

No display of modulepath header if no module found in it.
Remove call to module aliases on module avail command, as aliases are now directly included in the avail results.
Include module aliases in the displayed result of an avail command. Also display aliases defined in a global or user modulerc file.
Exit with error code if error occurred on display or help commands.
Fix module-info symbols resolution.
Better handling of .modulerc and .version files when searching for a modulefile.
Fix module-info version resolution.
Fix module-info alias resolution.
Register alias and version by the short module name and improve their resolution to avoid loop.
Source $MODULERCFILE/modulerc when $MODULERCFILE is dir.
Make it so you can do module avail un, wildcard * character implied.

modules-tcl-1.632 (2016-09-06)

Raise error if command does not receive the excepted number of arguments.
Improve column-mode display to get a denser output on avail command.
Standardize the output of Warning, Error, InternalBug and ErrorAndExit messages.
Add short option -d for --delim on prepend-path.
Introduce collection target concept to distinguish between machines, environments or domains that are incompatible with each other.
Introduce saveshow command, to display content of saved collections.
Improve save and restore commands to handle collection specified as absolute or relative file path.
Introduce saverm command, to delete saved collections.
Enable to restore collection with multiple modulefiles specified on the same line.
Fix restore command when there is no module to load in collection.
Fix restore command when collection fully rewind module paths.
Fix restore command to preserve module path order set in collection.
Raise error if try to save an empty environment in a collection.

modules-tcl-1.602 (2016-08-13)

Add support for Fish shell.
Import recent tests added to C-version on 10-use and 50-cmds testsuites.
Add short option -d for --delim on append-path and remove-path.
Fix load and implement unload x-resource.
Fix Python code that was broken or not Python3-compliant. Fixed code is used to define the module command, to render error and to process x-resource.
Always dictionary-sort (also called numerical-sort) list of modulefiles or list of collections.
Fix bash completion script to be compliant with bash posix mode.

modules-tcl-1.578 (2014-12-24)

First release to be described in this NEWS file but it does not mean this is the first version of modules-tcl as this Modules flavor is born in 2002.
At this stage, modules-tcl handles a majority of the module commands and modulefile Tcl commands available on C version.

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modules-tcl-1.923 (2017-07-20)

modules-tcl-1.832 (2017-04-29)

modules-tcl-1.775 (2017-03-07)

modules-tcl-1.729 (2017-02-01)

modules-tcl-1.704 (2017-01-20)

modules-tcl-1.677 (2017-01-04)

modules-tcl-1.655 (2016-11-23)

modules-tcl-1.632 (2016-09-06)

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modules-tcl-1.578 (2014-12-24)