Automatic handling of `SPACK_ROOT`?

The Spack build system implicitly requires the SPACK_ROOT environment variable to be defined, but this requirement isn’t written down explicitly, besides the fact the variable is now mentioned in the new Spack tutorial.

The problem I’m facing is that SPACK_ROOT may be defined in the login node but not in the compute node. The workaround I’m using is to have in the tests

    variables = {
        # ...
        'SPACK_ROOT': os.getenv('SPACK_ROOT'),
    }

I guess I may not the be only one in this situation. Should there be a more automatic handling of SPACK_ROOT (maybe automatise what I’m manually doing in the tests)?

[vkarak]

If you assume spack will be in PATH just run spack location --spack-root.

Yes, we do. So that’s perfect!

[tgamblin]

If you assume spack will be in PATH just run spack location --spack-root.