Packages can implement “detect_version” to support detection
of external instances of a package. This is generally easier
than implementing “determine_spec_details”. The API for
determine_version is similar: for example you can return
“None” to indicate that an executable is not an instance
of a package.
Users may implement a “determine_variants” method for a package.
When doing external detection, executables are grouped by version
and each group results in a single invocation of “determine_variants”
for the associated spec. The method returns a string specifying
the variants for the package. The method may additionally return
a dictionary representing extra attributes for the package.
These will be stored in the spec yaml and can be retrieved
from self.spec.extra_attributes
The Spack GCC package has been updated with an implementation
of “determine_variants” which adds the following extra
attributes to the package: c, cxx, fortran
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