Research Software FAIRness Checks (RSFC)

A command line interface to automatically evaluate the quality of a Github or Gitlab repository.

Authors: Daniel Garijo, Andrés Montero

Features

Given a repository URL, RSFC will perform a series of checks based on a list of research software quality indicators (RSQI). The RSQIs currently covered by the package are:

• software_has_license
• software_has_citation
• has_releases
• repository_workflows
• version_control_use
• requirements_specified
• software_documentation
• persistent_and_unique_identifier
• descriptive_metadata
• software_tests
• archived_in_software_heritage
• versioning_standards_use
• support_issue_tracking

For more information about these RSQIs, you can check https://github.com/EVERSE-ResearchSoftware/indicators. We have plans to implement all of the RSQIs available in that repository.

Requirements

Python 3.10.8 or higher

Dependencies are available in the requirements.txt or pyproject.toml file located in the root of the repository

Install from PyPI

Just run in your terminal the following command:

pip install rsfc

Install from Github with Poetry

To install the package, first clone the repository in your machine. This project uses Poetry for dependency and environment management.

git clone https://github.com/oeg-upm/rsfc.git

Go to the project's root directory

cd rsfc

Install Poetry (if you haven’t already)

curl -sSL https://install.python-poetry.org | python3 -

Make sure Poetry is available in your PATH

poetry --version

Create the virtual environment and install dependencies

poetry install

Activate the virtual environment (Optional)

source $(poetry env info --path)/bin/activate

Your terminal prompt should now show something like:

(rsfc-py3.11) your-user@your-machine rsfc %

With virtual environment activated you can tried like this:

rsfc --help

Without poetry virtual environment activated you need to use the poetry run:

poetry run rsfc --help

Usage

After installation, you can use the package by running if you activated the poetry env

rsfc --repo <repo_url>

or like this without the poetry env

poetry run rsfc --repo <repo_url>

If you want the output in OSTrails format, you can use the following flag

rsfc --repo <repo_url> --ftr

And additionally, if you want to run only one test, you can indicate the test identifier when running RSFC like this

rsfc --repo <repo_url> --id <test_id>

Docker installation

RSFC also offers a Dockerfile which you can build using the following commmand:

docker build -t --no-cache -t rsfc-docker .

For comodity, we provide a bash script that runs the container along with the necessary configurations. To execute it just run

./run_rsfc.sh --repo <repo_url> [--ftr] [--id <test_id>]

The parameters used for the script are the same as if you executed RSFC normally

RSFC GitHub Action

This repository provides a reusable GitHub Action to run RSFC on a given repository.

Workflows

There are two key workflows:

• run-rsfc.yml:
  Defines the main RSFC execution logic.
  Note: This workflow cannot be triggered directly because it uses on: workflow_call.
  It is designed to be reusable and must be invoked from another workflow.

• call-rsfc.yml:
  A workflow file that triggers run-rsfc.yml. It must be placed in each repository that you want to analyze, since the repository where call-rsfc.yml is hosted is the one that will be processed.
  No additional inputs are required because the repository context is automatically passed by the call. This workflow can be triggered manually (workflow_dispatch) or automatically (e.g., on push events).

  • Secrets:
  • RSFC_TOKEN is optional but recommended if you plan to run multiple analyses or expect heavy usage. It allows RSFC to access private repositories and avoid rate limits.

Usage

To use RSFC in a repository:

1. Copy call-rsfc.yml into .github/workflows/ of the repository you want to analyze.
2. Ensure that the required secrets are defined (see below).
3. No inputs are needed — the workflow automatically uses the repository it resides in.

Example:

name: Call RSFC reusable workflow

on:
  workflow_dispatch:   
  push:                

jobs:
  call-rsfc:
    uses: oeg-upm/rsfc/.github/workflows/run-rsfc.yml@main
    with:
      repo_url: https://github.com/${{ github.repository }}
    secrets:
      RSFC_TOKEN: ${{ secrets.RSFC_TOKEN }}