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Diffstat (limited to 'lib/spack/docs/packaging_guide.rst')
| -rw-r--r-- | lib/spack/docs/packaging_guide.rst | 16 |
1 files changed, 9 insertions, 7 deletions
diff --git a/lib/spack/docs/packaging_guide.rst b/lib/spack/docs/packaging_guide.rst index fb1d5edcab..5b0e556b34 100644 --- a/lib/spack/docs/packaging_guide.rst +++ b/lib/spack/docs/packaging_guide.rst @@ -2634,9 +2634,12 @@ extendable package: extends('python') ... -Now, the ``py-numpy`` package can be used as an argument to ``spack -activate``. When it is activated, all the files in its prefix will be -symbolically linked into the prefix of the python package. +This accomplishes a few things. Firstly, the Python package can set special +variables such as ``PYTHONPATH`` for all extensions when the run or build +environment is set up. Secondly, filesystem views can ensure that extensions +are put in the same prefix as their extendee. This ensures that Python in +a view can always locate its Python packages, even without environment +variables set. A package can only extend one other package at a time. To support packages that may extend one of a list of other packages, Spack supports multiple @@ -2684,9 +2687,8 @@ variant(s) are selected. This may be accomplished with conditional ... Sometimes, certain files in one package will conflict with those in -another, which means they cannot both be activated (symlinked) at the -same time. In this case, you can tell Spack to ignore those files -when it does the activation: +another, which means they cannot both be used in a view at the +same time. In this case, you can tell Spack to ignore those files: .. code-block:: python @@ -2698,7 +2700,7 @@ when it does the activation: ... The code above will prevent everything in the ``$prefix/bin/`` directory -from being linked in at activation time. +from being linked in a view. .. note:: |