EDirect is a software package, developed by NCBI, which allows you to use the E-utilities API in a Unix environment. It helps you quickly and easily use the E-utilities API, and has built-in tools to extract specific data from XML files and create tables of data that can be more easily analyzed or visualized.
See which versions of edirect are available:
$ module avail edirect
Load one version of edirect into your environment:
$ module load edirect/7.80
Notes from the sysadmin during installation:
$ cd /tmp $ sudo mkdir -p /export/apps/edirect/7.80 $ sudo chown aorth /export/apps/edirect/7.80 $ wget ftp://ftp.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/entrezdirect/edirect.tar.gz $ tar xf edirect.tar.gz -C /export/apps/edirect/7.80 --strip-components=1 $ cd /export/apps/edirect/7.80 $ export PATH=$PATH:/export/apps/edirect/7.80 $ sudo yum install perl-LWP-Protocol-https.noarch perl-Net-SSLeay.x86_64 $ ./setup.sh $ sudo chown -R root:root /export/apps/edirect/7.80
EDirect has a really old fashioned installation process and doesn't even version their releases very obviously. Don't just blindly copy/paste the shell commands from the installation document, and make sure to check the release notes for information about versions.