SURESOFT- A Framework for Sustainable Research Software Development and Deployment

SURESOFT-可持续研究软件开发和部署的框架

• 批准号: 432072763
• 负责人: Professor Dr. Christoph Jacob
• 金额: --
• 依托单位: Universitätsbibliothek
• 依托单位国家: 德国
• 项目类别: Research data and software (Scientific Library Services and Information Systems)
• 资助国家: 德国
• 项目状态: 未结题
• 来源: https://gepris.dfg.de/gepris/projekt/432072763?language=en
• 关键词: SURESOFT; Framework; Sustainable; Research; Software

Research software is of fundamental importance for many disciplines to achieve scientific progress. The software is commonly developed by scientists, with a short-term perspective to gain specific results. Often this leads to software implementations that are hard to extend, maintain and deploy. In fact, as the software gets more and more complex, the attempt to develop new features slows down the scientific process due to the lack of code quality, documentation, and unresolved defects. Such unsustainable development terminates with an unusable research software artifact, inducing the need to reimplement the software. Furthermore, complex deployability may prevent the widespread use in the context of other research projects and teaching. In sum, widespread and long-term usage including archival and reproducibility is inhibited and consequently, the scientific research quality and progress pace are hindered.To address these limitations, the goal of the SURESOFT project is to establish a for all research software projects common usable methodology and infrastructure based on the concepts of continuous integration, as an enabler for improving the quality of research software, easing software delivery and ensuring long-term sustainability and availability. Continuous integration implies and validates changes early on. This is especially useful for agile development environments as is the case with many research projects. SURESOFT will, therefore, devise an integrated approach that is based on the mechanisms of continuous integration – the automated building of software, deployment, and testing. Taking continuous integration as a basis SURESOFT will provide processes and tools to easily deliver the software to interested researchers, e.g. as ready to use software appliance, not only to allow widespread use of the software but also to ship it with the necessary development tools to easily extend it. Moreover, SURESOFT will use the technical basis of continuous integration to enable long-term archival and the reproducibility of results. Archiving only the source code of software misses essential support to build it and omits external dependencies – accordingly, the necessary context has to be archived as well. Also, archived projects have to be revalidated from time to time to ensure that results can still be reproduced, e.g., despite changes in the hardware or software environment.In sum, SURESOFT focuses on application-oriented research and development of e-Research tech- nologies. It covers core aspects of the e-Research Technologies Programme as it designs and develops new technologies, tools and methods to process and safeguard scientifically relevant information. It will empower scientists to efficiently use continuous integration and the associated toolchain that aid deployment, testing and archiving to create sustainable research software. Thereby, the synergies of an integrate approach will be explored.

科研软件是许多学科实现科学进步的基础。该软件通常是由科学家开发的，具有短期视角，以获得特定的结果。这通常会导致难以扩展、维护和部署的软件实现。事实上，随着软件变得越来越复杂，由于缺乏代码质量、文档和未解决的缺陷，开发新功能的尝试会减慢科学进程。这种不可持续的开发以不可用的研究软件制品而终止，导致需要重新实现软件。此外，复杂的可部署性可能会阻碍在其他研究项目和教学的背景下广泛使用。为了解决这些限制，SURESOFT项目的目标是基于持续集成的概念，为所有研究软件项目建立一个通用的可用方法和基础设施，作为提高研究软件质量、简化软件交付并确保长期可持续性和可用性的使能器。持续集成意味着并在早期验证更改。这对于敏捷开发环境特别有用，就像许多研究项目一样。因此，SURESOFT将设计一种基于持续集成机制的综合方法--自动构建软件、部署和测试。在持续集成的基础上，SURESOFT将提供流程和工具，以方便地将软件交付给感兴趣的研究人员，例如，准备使用软件设备，不仅允许软件的广泛使用，还将与必要的开发工具一起交付，以方便扩展。此外，SURESOFT将利用持续整合的技术基础，实现长期存档和成果的再现性。只归档软件的源代码会缺少构建它所需的基本支持，并省略了外部依赖关系--因此，还必须归档必要的上下文。此外，存档的项目必须不时重新验证，以确保结果仍然可以复制，例如，尽管硬件或软件环境发生了变化。总之，SURESOFT专注于以应用为导向的电子研究技术的研究和开发。它涵盖了电子研究技术方案的核心方面，因为它设计和开发了处理和保护科学相关信息的新技术、工具和方法。它将使科学家能够有效地使用持续集成和相关的工具链，帮助部署、测试和归档，以创建可持续的研究软件。因此，将探讨综合办法的协同增效作用。