Infrastructure/software/eosc/singularity

Background

A singularity container is a way to keep software stack all in one place (a single file ".sif") abstracting it from the underlying environment. This ensures the reproducibility of systems, i.e., custom software applications, bringing the advantage to use exactly the same software stack package also in different HPC, e.g., Puhti in Finland and Saga in Norway.

In short, we can build an application using a singularity container (by simply loading the container in an HPC), share the same singularity container in another HPC, or between different users in the same HPC, and be sure that our application will be reproducible, without worrying about the loading of the right versions of the required libraries.

References

Running singularity containers in Puhti: https://docs.csc.fi/computing/containers/run-existing/

Webinar-Running Singularity containers in Puhti: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tXM38BkC2WU

Running singularity containers in Saga: https://documentation.sigma2.no/software/containers.html