snakemake-workflow-catalog

A statically generated catalog of available Snakemake workflows

This repository serves as a centralized collection of workflows designed to facilitate reproducible and scalable data analyses using the Snakemake workflow management system.

Purpose

The Snakemake Workflow Catalog aims to provide a regularly updated list of high-quality workflows that can be easily reused and adapted for various data analysis tasks. By leveraging the power of Snakemake, these workflows promote:

• Reproducibility: Snakemake workflows produce consistent results, making it easier to share and validate scientific findings.
• Scalability: Snakemake workflows can be executed on various computing environments, from local machines to high-performance computing clusters and cloud services.
• Modularity: Snakemake workflows are structured to allow easy customization and extension, enabling users to adapt them to their specific needs.

Workflows

Workflows are automatically added to the Workflow Catalog. This is done by regularly searching Github repositories for matching workflow structures. The catalog includes workflows based on the following criteria.

All workflows

• The workflow is contained in a public Github repository.
• The repository has a README.md file, containing the words "snakemake" and "workflow" (case insensitive).
• The repository contains a workflow definition named either Snakefile or workflow/Snakefile.
• If the repository contains a folder rules or workflow/rules, that folder must at least contain one file ending on .smk.
• The repository is small enough to be cloned into a Github Actions job (very large files should be handled via Git LFS, so that they can be stripped out during cloning).
• The repository is not blacklisted here.

Standardized usage workflows

In order to additionally appear in the "standardized usage" area, repositories additionally have to:

• have their main workflow definition named workflow/Snakefile (unlike for plain inclusion (see above), which also allows just Snakefile in the root of the repository),
• provide configuration instructions under config/README.md
• contain a YAML file .snakemake-workflow-catalog.yml in their root directory, which configures the usage instructions displayed by this workflow catalog.

Typical content of the .snakemake-workflow-catalog.yml file:

usage:
  mandatory-flags:
    desc: # describe your flags here in a few sentences
    flags: # put your flags here
  software-stack-deployment:
    conda: true # whether pipeline works with '--sdm conda'
    apptainer: true # whether pipeline works with '--sdm apptainer/singularity'
    apptainer+conda: true # whether pipeline works with '--sdm conda apptainer/singularity'
    report: true # whether creation of reports using 'snakemake --report report.zip' is supported

Once included in the standardized usage area you can link directly to the workflow page using the URL https://snakemake.github.io/snakemake-workflow-catalog/docs/workflows/<owner>/<repo>. Do not forget to replace the <owner> and <repo> tags at the end of the URL.

Release handling

If your workflow provides Github releases, the catalog will always just scrape the latest non-preview release. Hence, in order to update your workflow's records here, you need to release a new version on Github.

Contributing

Contributions to the Snakemake Workflow Catalog are welcome! Ideas can be discussed on the catalog's Issues page first, and contributions made through Github Pull Requests, see the next section for details.

Working with a local copy

In order to make contributions, you can set up a local copy of the catalog and test your changes.

First, fork the repository on Github:

1. Go to the Snakemake Workflow Catalog repository on Github.
2. Click on the "Fork" button in the top right corner (Github documentation: Forking a repository).

Then, clone the forked repository:

1. Open a terminal on your local machine.
2. Run git clone https://github.com/{your-username}/snakemake-workflow-catalog.git to clone the repository (Github documentation: Cloning a repository).

Make your changes to the catalog:

1. Create a conda/mamba environment in order to work with the catalog locally.

cd <path-to>/snakemake-workflow-catalog
conda env create -n snakemake-workflow-catalog -f environment.yml
conda activate snakemake-workflow-catalog

2. Set required environmental variables. The variable TEST_REPO is used fetch only data from a single workflow. Note: Building the entire catalog from scratch will take several hours due to searching and testing thousands of Github repos.

export GITHUB_TOKEN="<your-github-token>"
export OFFSET=0
export LATEST_COMMIT=1000
export TEST_REPO="snakemake-workflows/rna-seq-star-deseq2"

3. Build the catalog data sources using the test repository.

python scripts/generate-catalog.py
python scripts/cleanup-catalog.py

4. Build the catalog web page using sphinx autobuild (live reload).

sphinx-autobuild source/ build/

... or using the make file (static build).

make html

5. Run git add . to stage your changes.
6. Run git commit -m "fix: your commit message" to commit your changes.
7. Run git push to push your changes to your fork on Github.

Finally, create a pull request:

1. Go to your fork on Github.
2. Follow the instructions on the Github documentation: Creating a pull request.

Using workflows from the catalog

To get started with a workflow from the catalog:

1. Clone the repository or download the specific workflow directory.
2. Review the documentation provided with the workflow to understand its requirements and usage.
3. Configure the workflow by editing the config.yml files as needed.
4. Execute the workflow using Snakemake.

For more detailed instructions, please refer to the documentation within each workflow directory.

License

The Snakemake Workflow Catalog is open-source and available under the MIT License. For more information and to explore the available workflows, visit https://snakemake.github.io/snakemake-workflow-catalog/.

Note: All workflows collected and presented on the Catalog are licensed under their own terms!