DataLad extension for containerized environments

This extension equips DataLad’s run/rerun functionality with the ability to transparently execute commands in containerized computational environments. On re-run, DataLad will automatically obtain any required container at the correct version prior execution.

Documentation

Getting started

The Datalad container extension provides a few commands to register containers with a dataset and use them for execution of arbitray commands. In order to get going quickly, we only need a dataset and a ready-made container. For this demo we will start with a fresh dataset and a demo container from Singularity-Hub.

# fresh dataset
datalad create demo
cd demo

# register container straight from Singularity-Hub
datalad containers-add my1st --url shub://datalad/datalad-container:testhelper

This will download the container image, add it to the dataset, and record basic information on the container under its name “my1st” in the dataset’s configuration at .datalad/config.

Now we are all set to use this container for command execution. All it needs is to swap the command datalad run with datalad containers-run. The command is automatically executed in the registered container and the results (if there are any) will be added to the dataset:

datalad containers-run cp /etc/debian_version proof.txt

If there is more than one container registered, the desired container needs to be specifed via the --name option. Containers do not need to come from Singularity-Hub, but can be local images too. Via the containers-add --call-fmt option it is possible to configure how exactly a container is being executed, or which local directories shall be made available to a container.

At the moment there is built-in support for Singularity images, but other container execution systems can be used together with custom helper scripts. Direct support for Docker is under development.

API Reference

Python API

containers_add Add a container environment to a dataset
containers_remove Remove a container environment from a dataset
containers_list List known container environments of a dataset
containers_run Drop-in replacement for datalad run for command execution in a container