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.
Checklists#
Step-by-step lists to work through when preparing a tool.
A step-by-step checklist for getting a tool ready for the Tool Shed.
A security checklist for wrappers, inputs, commands, files, credentials, and downloads.
A checklist for making tools work when jobs run remotely without a shared filesystem.
Documentation#
Reference guides for the pieces that make up a tool and its repository.
Structure, macros, command sections, tests, and help for tool wrappers.
Declaring dependencies with Conda, Bioconda, and containers.
How to organize files within a Tool Shed repository.
Metadata and configuration for Tool Shed repositories.
Ongoing maintenance and release practices.
Galaxy Ecosystem#
Galaxy Project – open-source platform for data-intensive research
IUC – Intergalactic Utilities Commission, curated community tools
Planemo – CLI for Galaxy tool and workflow development
Galaxy Tools for Visual Studio Code – Galaxy Language Server-powered completion, validation, linting, and more for tool wrappers
Galaxy Training Network – tutorials and training materials