Galaxy Tool Development Standards and Best Practices#

Following the extensive efforts put in by developers from the Intergalactic Utilities Commission (IUC) into developing Galaxy tools over the years, we have collected the best practices below. We recommend them to the Galaxy tool developer community, both for contributing back to the IUC repository and for use in their own tool repositories.

Tool XML

Structure, macros, command sections, tests, and help for tool wrappers.

Tools
Integration Checklist

A step-by-step checklist for getting a tool ready for the Tool Shed.

ToolShed Readiness Checklist
Tool Dependencies

Declaring dependencies with Conda, Bioconda, and containers.

Tool Dependencies
Repository Layout

How to organize files within a Tool Shed repository.

GitHub Repositories
.shed.yml

Metadata and configuration for Tool Shed repositories.

Toolshed Yaml File
Repository Management

Ongoing maintenance and release practices.

Repository Management on GitHub and the ToolShed

Galaxy Ecosystem#

Indices and tables#