Getting Scientific Software Installed - 2026

The Getting Scientific Software Installed training (or GSSI in short) is jointly organised by the HPC support teams of the institutions that are part of the Vlaams Supercomputer Centrum.

For more information, see the documentation pages.

Description

Getting the software that is required to run your scientific workloads installed on a supercomputer can be a daunting task. There is a wide variety of tools and techniques to consider, and the best option depends on various factors including which software you need, which system(s) you want to use, which programming language(s) the software is implemented in, etc. In this training session, VSC staff will briefly present and demo various well-established tools and techniques for getting scientific software installed.

After this session, researchers will be able to select the right tool for their use case and efficiently get started with installing the software required for their scientific workloads.

This training session is aimed at beginner/intermediate HPC users who want to get started with installing scientific software on a supercomputer.

• Basic knowledge of how to work on the VSC clusters (logging in, submitting jobs, file management) is a prerequisite.
• To get a taste for what is offered in the GSSI training, have a look at the slides and recordings from 2025 at https://vscentrum.github.io/gssi-training/2025
• To prepare for the session, it can be useful to already go through the Scientific Software section on the VSC Documentation pages.
• Users looking for in-depth information on a single tool/technique might be better off following specific training sessions. See the VSC Training page for other training sessions offered by VSC.

Practical details

The 2026 GSSI session takes place on Wed 14 Oct 2026 between 09:00 and 17:00. The venue address is:

Belpaire - 03.Z.02 (3rd floor)
Marie-Elisabeth Belpaire building (close to Brussels-North train station)
Simon Bolivarlaan 17
1000 Brussel

It is highly recommended to attend this event in-person. The session before noon can also be joined online (via Microsoft Teams), but the afternoon hands-on session (see the schedule below) can only be followed on site. In both cases, attendance is free of charge, but registration via this form is mandatory! Lunch and coffee breaks are provided for people attending on site.

Schedule

• [09:00] Informal welcome including coffee
• [09:30] Presentations: overview of tools part I
  • Modules
  • EESSI
  • Using container images
  • Conda + mamba + pixi
  • Python + pip + venv + uv
  • R + Julia + Rust + Java
• [11:00] Coffee break
• [11:30] Presentations: overview of tools part II
  • Manually building and installing software
  • Building container images
  • EasyBuild + Spack
  • When should I use which tool?
  • Conclusions
• [12:30] Lunch
• [13:30] Hands-on
• [15:00] Coffee break
• [15:30] Hands-on (continued)
• [17:00] The end

During the hands-on sessions, we will work with a “choose your own adventure” approach. Exercises will be provided for each of the tools, which you can use to make yourself familiar with their workflow. You can also focus on figuring out which tool(s) are most appropriate for the software you are interested in. VSC support staff will be around to answer questions and provide hands-on help to attendees.

Contact

This training is organised by the Vlaams Supercomputer Centrum (VSC). If you have any questions related to this training session, please contact support@vscentrum.be.

The speakers and organisers of this session are:

• Kenneth Hoste, Lara Peeters (HPC support team, Ghent University)
• Alex Domingo, Sam Moors, Cintia Willemyns (HPC support team, Vrije Universiteit Brussel)
• Steven Vandenbrande, Maxime Van den Bossche (HPC support team, KU Leuven)
• Robin Verschoren (HPC support team, University of Antwerp)

Previous runs

Slides and video recordings from previous runs of this training sessions are available:

• 2025: click