Developer Install: Apptainer

Build and Test: MOOSE

In this example, we will test the MOOSE framework. You should run this example if you are using this development environment to develop MOOSE itself. Here, we assume that a MOOSE repository is available within ~/projects/moose. If you have cloned MOOSE in a different location, you should replace the directory in the first command that follows with the directory in which MOOSE is cloned.

cd ~/projects/moose
cd test
make -j 4
./run_tests -j 4

The above will compile the MOOSE test application and run the tests.

You can also build and test the MOOSE combined application (which contains all of the physics modules) if you wish with the following:

cd ~/projects/moose/modules
make -j 4
./run_tests -j 4

Build and Test: MOOSE Application

In this example, we will test building and running tests for a MOOSE-based application. You should run this example if you are using this development environment to develop a MOOSE-based application.

Run the following, replacing the directory in the first command (/path/to/app) to the directory that your MOOSE-based application is cloned to:

cd /path/to/app
make -j 4
./run_tests -j 4

The above will compile the MOOSE-based application and run its tests.

Use a Different Container

The container name moose-dev-openmpi-x86_64 can be changed another container, for example, moose-dev-cuda-openmpi-x86_64, to use the environment that has CUDA available. For example:

apptainer shell oras://ghcr.io/idaholab/apptainer/moose-dev-cuda-openmpi-x86_64:2026.05.08

Use NVIDIA GPUs

GPUs are not available by default in the containerized environment. The command line argument --nv will bind in the necessary context from the host systems to enable the use of NVIDIA GPUs in the containerized environment. For example:

apptainer shell --nv oras://ghcr.io/idaholab/apptainer/moose-dev-cuda-openmpi-x86_64:2026.05.08

Bind Mount Directories

By default, Apptainer will make available the your home directory in the environment, and the current directory you are in. Other directories from the host system may not be available.

Let's say that you have a directory /data on your system that you want to access within the containerized development environment. By default, it will not be available. To "bind mount" (mount the directory into the containerized environment) directories, the command line option -B is used. For example, to bind mount /data into the containerized environment, you would run:

apptainer shell -B /data oras://ghcr.io/idaholab/apptainer/moose-dev-openmpi-x86_64:2026.05.08

Using Other Versions

The suffix in the container URI (the oras://.. component) is the container "tag". This tag represents the version. Here, we use the current version which is 2026.05.08. This tag can be replaced with an older tag to use an older version, which can be required if using a version of MOOSE that is not the latest version.