In this blog post, I’ll show you guys how to make your own shiny container for your tool! Zero fuss(*) and in FOUR simple steps.
As an example, I will show how to make a singularity container for one of our public tools, ANARCI, the antibody numbering tool everyone in OPIG and external users are familiar with – If not, check the web app and the GitHub repo here and here.
(*) Provided you have your own Linux machine with sudo permissions, otherwise, you can’t do it – sorry. Same if you have a Mac or Windows – sorry again. BUT, there are workarounds for these cases such as using the remote singularity builder here, for which you only need to sign up and create an account, and the use of Virtual Machines (VMs), as described here.
Previously on this blog, my colleagues Carlos and Eoin have extolled the many virtues of Singularity, which I will not repeat here. Instead, I’d like to talk about a rather interesting subject that was unexpectedly thrust upon me when my faithful Linux laptop started to show the early warning signs of critical existence failure: is there a good way to run a Singularity container on a pure Windows machine? It turns out that, with version 2 of the Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL), there is.
Have you ever worked with a piece of software that is awfully difficult to set up? That legacy code written on FORTRAN 77, that other one that requires significant modifications to compile, or any of those that require a long-winded bash script with a thousand dependencies (which you also have to install!). Would it not be helpful if, when that red-eyed PhD student, that one that just spent three months writing up their thesis, says that they absolutely must use that server where you have installed all your stuff, you could just relocate to another one without trouble? Well, you may be able to do that now. You just need to use containerization.
The idea behind containerization is rather simple. The best way to ensure anyone can reproduce your work is to, well, ship your entire system to whomever needs to use it. You could, for example, pack up your desktop in a box, and ship it to your collaborators anywhere in the world. Unfortunately, this idea is quite unpractical, not only because of tedious logistics (ever had to deal with customs?), but also because suddenly you won’t be able to run your own pipeline. However, it is a good enough thought that at some point made a clever engineer wonder whether there was a way to ship an entire system without physically delivering the computer. And that’s exactly what they designed.
Best way to make sure your collaborators on the other side of the world can run your pipeline — just pack your desktop in one of these, and ship it away!Continue reading →
