What is a SCI-F App?

The Scientific Filesystem is a definition for modular organization of containers to make contents programmatically accessible, and less of black boxes. SCI-F is being developed to encourage modular organization of executables and files within reproducible containers.

It makes it possible to approach an unknown container, and easily know how to use it.

For more detail,see (and comment) on our specification here

What can SCI-F Apps Do?

SCI-F apps provide modular metrics, tests, and applications within a container.

A container typically has a primary function, which we call a runscript, and apps serve as helpers, additional functions, or metric tests for the container. A SCI-F app can serve any of the following:

  • Programmatically accessible entrypoints for multiple applications [example].
  • Wrappers to run a container in different contexts [example].
  • Evaluation of metrics or additional tests/checks for a container. [example].
  • Entrypoints to run components of scientific pipelines, and easily swap them out. [example-coming-soon].

A SCI-F app can also be fun. Some of the examples above include `custom` metrics to print a fortune along with a colored cow, or a stream of multicolored pokemon ascii.

How Do I get Started and Contribute?

SCI-F support will be released with Singularity Version 2.4, however the features are included in the development branch. If you install from development:

git clone -b development https://www.github.com/singularityware/singularity.git
cd singularity
./autogen.sh
./configure --prefix=/usr/local
make
sudo make install 

then you can build a container as your normally would, with any of the app specifications included. You can view the version 2.4 docs for details about the SCI-F definition for Singulairty. Have an app you want to share? There will be easy instructions for adding it here soon. Can you write a text file? it's that easy.

Don't we already have open containers?

SCI-F is not a standard or format for a container itself, it simply pertains to the organization of the content.

Still have a question? Please reach out! Contributions are greatly appreciated. with open source

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Singularity Apps are modular SCI-F apps that can be added as helpers or wrappers for Singularity containers