The RHEL6 compute node image I used to maintain just used rpms (maybe via SCL). I'm inclined to think the trades-off win against Spack and Guix, assuming you d

The RHEL6 compute node image I used to maintain just used rpms (maybe via SCL). I'm inclined to think the trades-off win against Spack and Guix, assuming you don't have the world telling you to use proprietary compilers and libraries that can't be handled that way. The mess I'm used to seeing on HPC systems with combinatorial builds, with everything done through a confusion of environment modules, bothers me and typically confuses users, especially when there's a system package that provides the same thing. (At least look at TACC's Lmod instead of the canonical modules implementation.)