MSI Tutorial - Reproducible Computational Environments Using Containers: Introduction to Singularity/Apptainer

This tutorial is presented by MSI.

Singularity is a container framework and platform that allows researchers to create portable and reproducible deployments of software applications and environments. A Singularity container image provides a self-contained, isolated environment with all of the necessary software, dependencies, and environment configuration to run the workflow provided by the container image. As a result, Singularity is a popular and powerful tool for supporting computational research at MSI and other HPC centers, and can simplify setup, maintenance, and sharing of many computational research workflows.

This workshop will cover how to:

• Understand the use-cases for Singularity at MSI
• Use Singularity containers to run commands
• Use Docker images with Singularity
• Build your own Singularity images

To be successful, you should have:

• An active MSI account
• A computer you can use for the workshop, with the ability to connect to a shell session on MSI resources
• General familiarity with using the bash shell to navigate and interact with a Linux system
• An active account at github.com
• (Recommended) Access to a system where you can install Docker and run the Docker Singularity container
• The Zoom videoconferencing client installed on your computer, if attending remotely