Creating reusable tools from scripts: the Galaxy Tool Factory

Bioinformatics. 2012 Dec 1;28(23):3139-40. doi: 10.1093/bioinformatics/bts573. Epub 2012 Sep 28.

Abstract

Motivation: Galaxy is a software application supporting high-throughput biology analyses and work flows, available as a free on-line service or as source code for local deployment. New tools can be written to extend Galaxy, and these can be shared using public Galaxy Tool Shed (GTS) repositories, but converting even simple scripts into tools requires effort from a skilled developer.

Results: The Tool Factory is a novel Galaxy tool that automates the generation of all code needed to execute user-supplied scripts, and wraps them into new Galaxy tools for upload to a GTS, ready for review and installation through the Galaxy administrative interface.

Availability and implementation: The Galaxy administrative interface supports automated installation from the main GTS. Source code and support are available at the project website, https://bitbucket.org/fubar/galaxytoolfactory. The Tool Factory is implemented as an installable Galaxy tool.

Contact: ross.lazarus@channing.harvard.edu.

Publication types

  • Research Support, N.I.H., Extramural
  • Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't
  • Research Support, U.S. Gov't, Non-P.H.S.

MeSH terms

  • Computational Biology / methods*
  • Electronic Data Processing / methods*
  • High-Throughput Nucleotide Sequencing*
  • Programming Languages
  • Software*
  • User-Computer Interface