Rough draft of Modules wave containers Blog post(s)

[edmundmiller]

@ewels An initial rough draft of the blog post.

It's a bit all over the place, which led me to think it might be better served as a series that we post all at once.

There are multiple layers to it:

• End users (Basically won't notice)
• One off contributors
• Pipeline and Module maintainers
• nf-core infrastructure stuff that will countless years
  • Renovate automation
  • nf-core download simplification
  • nf-core modules create simplification

Is what's coming to the surface for me. Might restructure this based on that.

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[FranBonath]

Overall I the arguments are very clear and also you address the most common concerns one might have.

What I would consider to add is who from nf-core was involved in the decision to go forward, just to stress that it was not Seqera trying to get us to do something the core team didn't want to do. You could also clarify in which capacity you are writing. When you use "we" in the text, are you writing as a member of the core team, for example.

Also, people might be concerned that hosting containers might become a paid service of Seqera in the future, once we changed all our pipelines to use them. This is of course highly connected to the entire "are we locked in" question.

[mashehu]

Just read the beginning (in between a train and a plane). Like we discussed in another thread, we should even in the intro start with the problem it is solving from an nf-core point of view and then introduce seqera containers. Basically extend the time to seqera mention as long as possible.

[ewels]

Great feedback, thanks all! I keep thinking I'm done with this, then I come back with fresh eyes and do a load more 😆

I just pushed a fairly big change, moving content around and repackaging some of what was there. Also a bit of new stuff in places, such as mentioning the process of discussion in nf-core governance @FranBonath

You could also clarify in which capacity you are writing. When you use "we" in the text, are you writing as a member of the core team, for example.

I couldn't find a way to do this that didn't feel very clunky. Suggestions welcome..

[ewels]

I don't know why the playwright CI tests are failing, and why the deployment preview is unstyled :/

It's rendering fine locally, PDF attached for convenience of reviewing: Migration from Biocontainers to Seqera Containers_ Part 1.pdf

[FranBonath]

@ewels one way to clarify the "we" could be by using a signature at the end, or by stating explicitly who "we" is in the beginning by making this a bit more letter style: "Dear nf-core community, the core team would like to inform you about some upcoming changes in how we would like to handle the software images...

Or something along this line?

[FranBonath]

But it's not a hill I am going to die on.

[ewels]

Thanks for the extensive review @christopher-hakkaart @kenibrewer ! 🙌🏻 Agreed with all suggested changes, have merged.

@kenibrewer - 100% agree about the single line thing. I usually do that and encourage others to do the same 😅 In this case the text started off in google docs and I exported the markdown though, which is why it has the mega lines. I wasn't really expecting such a thorough review 👀 😅 I'll split up the lines now though.

@FranBonath - I think the "Dear community" idea, I've added that 👍🏻 Has a nice ring to it and makes it clear who the authors are off the bat, as you say.

[ewels]

Can we split out the section about mulled images into it's own Part 2

We could but I'm not sure that I really want to. That's mostly there just to describe how the process is a bit painful currently. I don't think that it deserves its own blog post, especially as we're hopefully about to make it redundant. I'll tuck it into a collapsable admonition though as I agree that it is a bit of an impenetrable wall and we don't want to hold folks up.

The tone is somewhat defensive

Yeah that's partly because much of the content came from answering questions in the community. I like the idea generally, but I also think that some of those answers cover really nice features (eg. embedding container logs on the nf-core website), which I'd prefer not to hide. As an alternative, I'll see if I can change the headings so that they are more positive in nature.

[ewels]

Ok did quite a bit of rearrangement of the text. A lot is now tucked away into collapsible admonition boxes. I quite like this as the detail is still there for folks who want it, but for a casual observer the article is a bit easier to skim read.

@pinin4fjords - I added a section about delays in getting Singularity images as you suggested. Please check that you agree with what I wrote 😅

[pinin4fjords]

Ok did quite a bit of rearrangement of the text. A lot is now tucked away into collapsible admonition boxes. I quite like this as the detail is still there for folks who want it, but for a casual observer the article is a bit easier to skim read.

@pinin4fjords - I added a section about delays in getting Singularity images as you suggested. Please check that you agree with what I wrote 😅

Great- thanks Phil!

[ewels]

Something is bugged in the image overlap with the expansion bar

Fixed in a0a349b1

[ewels]

I also don't understand the Spitzpaprika/chili pepper reference?

Made more sense earlier, when the heading was something like "Potential concerns" or something spicy. Replaced with some colourful floppy disks in 67e1ede2

[ewels]

Ok, I think everything is addressed. Got 3 ✅ so merging.

Thank you everyone for the mammoth review! 70 comments 😮‍💨 🥵 😆