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. 2015 Oct 15:4:47.
doi: 10.1186/s13742-015-0087-0. eCollection 2015.

Bioboxes: standardised containers for interchangeable bioinformatics software

Peter Belmann  1 , Johannes Dröge  2 , Andreas Bremges  3 , Alice C McHardy  2 , Alexander Sczyrba  1 , Michael D Barton  4
Affiliations

Bioboxes: standardised containers for interchangeable bioinformatics software

Peter Belmann et al. Gigascience. .

Abstract

Software is now both central and essential to modern biology, yet lack of availability, difficult installations, and complex user interfaces make software hard to obtain and use. Containerisation, as exemplified by the Docker platform, has the potential to solve the problems associated with sharing software. We propose bioboxes: containers with standardised interfaces to make bioinformatics software interchangeable.

Keywords: Bioinformatics; Docker; Reproducibility; Software; Standards; Usability.

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Figures

Fig. 1
Fig. 1
Comparison of the current software situation in bioinformatics (top) with using biobox Docker containers with standardised interfaces (bottom)
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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