Dear GEOtop aficionados. Francesco Serafin with the help of Olaf David fully 'dockerized' GEOtop during last week: https://hub.docker.com/r/omslab/geotop
You can run it now on Linux, Mac, Windows, Amazon, Google, via this Docker image. There is description on how to use it, pretty simple. This is exciting, since it makes building the model on all platform now obsolete and you can get it out easily to more collaborators. In our opinion this is the best way to disseminate a model like this. Please spread the word and have people using it.
If you want to know what Docker is you can click on the Docker logo above.
Nice work! Docker containers are the future of reproducible research. But there is one (not so significant) problem (actually the same problem exists with open data field) - nobody (or limited community) want to use it instead of simplicity. I had very limited feedback with my LHMP (dockerized and interactive lumped hydrological models playground, https://github.com/hydrogo/LHMP).
ReplyDeleteYour comment is well received. I think the measure of model uptake relates very much to the community it is serving. If the GEOtop image gets pulled 20 times it's a big success, because then it is in hand of the majority of all GEOtop users. (My apologies if I am off with that number).
DeleteGEOtop users who tried to build the model from source with all dependencies (there are multiple accounts of it according to the mailing lists) might appreciate this effort even more. It is simple now to get it out and use it. However, how the GEOtop community make this happen is up to them (e.g. at EGU?). The Docker thing just addresses the technical aspect, but there is also a cultural social one.
Btw, my colleague always wanted to use GEOtop but gave up trying to build it. He gave up eventually. Yesterday he installed Docker, pulled the image and ran the model 5 minutes later on his box. Now he's happy.
The best model is useless if you can't run it. Here is where Docker shines, you still have to have a good, scientific sound model.
Riccardo,
ReplyDeletethe label is wrong: GEOtop 2.1 was dockerized not versione 2.0 !