Allow users to specify root env dir (#32836)

* Allow users to specify root env dir

Environments managed by spack have some advantages over anonymous Environments
but they are tucked away inside spack's directory tree. This PR gives
users the ability to specify where the environments should live.

See #32823

This is also taken as an opportunity to ensure that all references are to "managed environments",
rather than "named environments". Prior to this PR some references to the latter persisted.

Co-authored-by: Tom Scogland <scogland1@llnl.gov>
Co-authored-by: Tamara Dahlgren <35777542+tldahlgren@users.noreply.github.com>
Co-authored-by: Gregory Becker <becker33@llnl.gov>

1 files changed, 5 insertions, 4 deletions

diff --git a/lib/spack/docs/environments.rst b/lib/spack/docs/environments.rst
index 09d8f07af1..e2805e4f01 100644
--- a/lib/spack/docs/environments.rst
+++ b/lib/spack/docs/environments.rst
@@ -58,9 +58,9 @@ Using Environments
 Here we follow a typical use case of creating, concretizing,
 installing and loading an environment.
 
-^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
-Creating a named Environment
-^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
+^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
+Creating a managed Environment
+^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
 
 An environment is created by:
 
@@ -72,7 +72,8 @@ Spack then creates the directory ``var/spack/environments/myenv``.
 
 .. note::
 
-   All named environments are stored in the ``var/spack/environments`` folder.
+   All managed environments by default are stored in the ``var/spack/environments`` folder.
+   This location can be changed by setting the ``environments_root`` variable in ``config.yaml``.
 
 In the ``var/spack/environments/myenv`` directory, Spack creates the
 file ``spack.yaml`` and the hidden directory ``.spack-env``.