Deprecating Modules
===================

There may come a time when your site might want to mark a module for
deprecation.  If you track module usage, you can find the modules
that are rarely used, and you can find out which users are using the
modules. Once you have decided which modules are marked for removal,
you can make a message be printed when the module is loaded.

Suppose you want to mark a module for later removal.  You can setup a
message that is reported to the user *Every time the module is
loaded*.

For example::

    $ module load abc/1.2.3

    abc/1.2.3:
        This module is deprecated and will be removed from the system
        on June 19.   Please load abc/2.3.4 instead.


Note that this message is just text and in no way controls user access
to the module.  Your site will have to remove the module.  This nag
message is a way to let your users know that removal will happen ahead
of time.

Also note that a user only gets this message when loading the module.
There is no special marking in ``module avail`` or ``module spider``.




You can create a file called "admin.list" and place it in
"/path/to/lmod/etc/admin.list".  Note that typically the lmod script
will be in "/path/to/lmod/lmod/libexec/lmod". The etc directory is
independent to the version of Lmod.  You can see the location that
Lmod is looking for by executing::

    $ module --config

Look for "Admin File".  You can also set the "LMOD_ADMIN_FILE" to
point to the admin.list file.

The admin file consists of key-value pairs.  For example::

      moduleName/version:  message
      <blank line>

Or::

     Full_PATH_to_Modulefile: message
     <blank line>

Or::

     foo/1.1  | bar/1.2  | Full_Path_to_Modulefile:
     message
     <blank line>


Lmod treats assume that if a pattern starts with a '/' then it is a
full path to a modulefile.  If it doesn't then it is a
moduleName/version string. Also, you can have several
modulefiles use the same message by separating them with *|* 

You can use Lua regular expression to also match one or modules for
both the full path to a module or the module fullname. Lua regular
expressions are much less powerful (see
http://lua-users.org/wiki/PatternsTutorial for more details).
In particular they do not support patterns like::

    (foo|bar)


Lmod searches the list of modules and/or paths from top to bottom and
it uses the first match it finds.  So you might want to place the
module patterns from specific to general in the admin file to avoid
incorrect matching.

Also some care may be necessary for '.' as it matches every character
so you might have to change the '.' to '%.' to match the actual
period. Also '-' is a regular expression character so matching module
names that have a '-' in their name requires % quoting.


The message can be as many lines as you like.  The message ends with a
blank line.   Below is an example::


      gcc/2.95:    This module is deprecated and will be removed from the system on Jan 1. 1999.
                   Please switch to a newer compiler.

      boost/1%.54%.0:
      We are having issues

      /opt/apps/modulefiles/Compiler/gcc/4.7.2/boost/1.55.0:
      We are having issues


      boost/1%.[5-7].*:
         We are having more issues.

      boost%-mpi/1%.[5-7].*:
         This module will be removed.
      


Note that you don't include the .lua part when specifying the version
number.


