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The IPF Software Module workflow publishes information about locally installed software available through modules or Lmod. IPF tries to make intelligent inferences from the system installed modules files when it publishes software information. There are some easy ways, however, to add information to your module files that will enhance/override the information otherwise published.
The ExtModules workflow, as of IPF 1.8 has two methods for discovering the modules you wish to publish. The recommended method, for any site using Lmod, is to point the workflow at an lmod cache file that represents exactly what you wish to publish. It will then publish every module in the spiderT table from the cache file, except modules listed in the hiddenT table.
If you are not using Lmod, or do not wish to use lmod cache files, the workflow will fall back to the traditional method of walking the MODULEPATH. The workflow then traverses your MODULEPATH and infers fields such as Name and Version from the directory structure/naming conventions of the module file layout. The new IPF default behavior is to treat each directory in your MODULEPATH as a top level directory, under which all of the subdirectory structure is semantically significant (and part of the inferred name of the module). The old default behavior, if desired, can be enabled with by configuring the extmodules workflow with the --modules_recurse argument.
Depending on the exact workflow steps, fields such as Description may be blank, or inferred from the stdout/stderr text of the module. However, the following fields can always be explicitly added to a module file:
Name:
Version:
Description:
URL:
Category:
Keywords:
SupportStatus:
SupportContact:
Each field is a key: value pair. The IPF workflows are searching the whole text of each module file for these fields. They may be placed in a module-whatis line, or in a comment, and IPF will still read them.
More details about the contents of these fields can be found in the more comprehensive INSTALL.md documentation.