Installing tools on a server is always challenging, so below are the installation options, ordered from easiest to most challenging options. Remember that, by default, most installations will try to install the tool in a system-side location. You must have administrator privileges to do this and would generally have use sudo to get this to work. That won't work on TACC! (sudo means "super-user do".) So, look for ways you can install the locally, in a directory you do have access to.
First, always check if the tool is already available on the server. On TACC, you can use
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to check if it exists.You may need to load the biocontainers module and then type module spider <partoftoolname> to find modules that are containerized as part of biocontainer.
Option 1: Installing through Conda
On the tool website, look for conda installation. Python package are parceled up as conda packages that can be installed with one command:
conda install <toolname>
Option 2: Installing from Binary files
On the tool website, always look for binary files. These have already been compiled (converted from high level source code into machine specific code). So, you will just need to
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When you run ./configure, you can add certain options to fine tune the install. For example, you can set where the executable and any other files associated with the program will be installed.
For instance
./configure FILENAME --prefix=$HOME/bin
would put the executables in $HOME/opt bin rather than the default (usually /usr/local).
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Make compiles the code using the options you specified with the configure command.
At this point you will may get errors pertaining to the options you specified.
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Once installed, consider adding the installed executable to your PATH variable.
First, see what PATH currently contains
echo $PATH
Then, find the location of the executable you just installed, for example, by going to the directory (typically named bin) and using pwd
pwd
Then, add this location to the PATH variable
export PATH=/home/daras/tool/bin:$PATH
echo $PATH
This PATH will only last for this session. If you'd like to make this change persistent and available everytime you log in, add this export command to the .bashrc or .profile files in your home directory.