SHPC is a utility that allows the installation of containers as modules (see also https://singularity-hpc.readthedocs.io/en/latest)


This approach is largely automated and reduces the complexity of deploying and using containers. It also has the benefit of hiding the Singularity syntax for these “modular containers”, which reduces the complexity for users. When a container is loaded as a module, one can invoke the container with just the name of the tool. For example, one could use module load blast+ and then call BLAST+ with blastn rather than singularity exec <container_name> blastn


For containerised applications that are already available in the SHPC registry, installing and using them via SHPC is much simpler than using Singularity itself. For applications that are not yet in the registry, writing a custom container recipe may still be more time effective than learning how to use Singularity.


For more information, see the SHPC guides.