How to import an application

Write your application descriptor with Boutiques

Applications are imported into VIP using Boutiques descriptors.

Please do not hesitate to contact us if you need help with writing your application descriptor. Once the descriptor is ready, VIP admins will import it for you.

We recommend that descriptors are versionned and published to Zenodo, similarly to what has been done for the Gate OpenDose application:

Note that publising to Zenodo can be done through VIP, once the application is imported with its Boutiques descriptor. In exchange, you will get a DOI allowing for the proper citation of the application.

We also recommend that you use containers (such as Docker or Singularity) to facilitate application installation and sharing.

Docker guidelines

If you are not familiar with Docker, read the docs on the Docker website.
We recommend to build containers from a Dockerfile.
For efficient management of containers in VIP, we recommend that containers use the following images if possible:
- Linux distribution: centos7 (official).
- Compiled Matlab applications: viplatform/matlab-compiler-runtime (unofficial).
- Applications using MRtrix3: glatard/mrtrix3 (unofficial).
Compiled applications: avoid using architecture-specific compilation flags as it will produce non-portable code (Illegal instruction error messages).
Your application is supposed to work with a regular user (not as root).

Troubleshooting tips: compiled Matlab functions

Arguments of compiled Matlab functions will be passed as strings, which may create nasty bugs at runtime. We recommend that numerical arguments are handled using code such as:

                
                if ~isnumeric(parameter)
                  parameter = str2double(parameter);
                  if isnan(parameter)
                    disp('The parameter value is not a number')
                    return
                  end
                end