Skip to content

Installing SciPipe

Installing SciPipe means first installing the Go programming langauge, and then using Go's go install command to install the SciPipe library. After this, you will be able to use Go's go run command to run SciPipe workflows.

Install Go

Install Go by following the instructions on this page, for your operating system.

To make sure that everything is installed, run the go command in your terminal, and make sure that it outputs something.

To be specific, you can try exetuging go version, which sould output something like the below:

$ go version
go version go1.17 linux/amd64

Install SciPipe

There are two main ways of installing SciPipe, one which is super-easy, and one which is recommended if you want to make sure that your workflow will never break because of API changes in SciPipe, and that you always have a copy of the SciPipe source code available.

Easy: Using go install

The easiest way to intsall SciPipe is by using the go install tool in the Go tool chain. To install scipipe with go install, run the following command in your terminal:

go install github.com/scipipe/scipipe/...@latest

N.B: Don't miss the ..., as otherwise the scipipe helper tool will not be installed.

Initialize a new workflow file

Now, you should be able to write code like in the example below, in files ending with .go.

The easiest way to get started is to let the scipipe tool generate a starting point for you:

scipipe new myfirstworkflow.go

... which you can then edit to your liking.

Create a Go module

Before you can run the workflow, you need to also create a go module.

To do this, you can run the following command, in the directory where you created your first workflow:

go mod init <package-name>

For <module-name>, you have to replace it with a name of the package. For a simple script, you can name whatever you want, but if you are thinking about publishing it online, e.g. on GitHub, you typically want to name it like the URL of the corresponding GitHub repo, e.g. github.com/<your-username>/<your-repository>.

By doing this, two files will be created:

go.mod
go.sum

Make sure to add them to your git repository, with:

git add go.mod go.sum
git commit -m "Add Go module files"

Now, to make sure that scipipe is included as a dependency in the go.mod file, run the go mod tidy command:

go mod tidy

The go.mod file should now look something like:

module mylittlemodule

go 1.17

require github.com/scipipe/scipipe v0.10.2

... and the go.sum file might look something like:

github.com/scipipe/scipipe v0.10.2 h1:crXD1gGh/LuBfWfT4CdXcRFtPjem5weyXN03BDfVOuU=
github.com/scipipe/scipipe v0.10.2/go.mod h1:Nwof+Uimtam7GTpkU6cAf/EOnqvxcOVFytjnYU5I3vY=

Optional extra step: Use a copy of SciPipe's source code in your own code

In order to make sure that your workflow will never break because of API changes in SciPipe, and that you always have a copy of the SciPipe source code available, we recommend to always include a copy of the SciPipe source code in your workflow's source code repository. The SciPipe source code is only around 1500 lines of code, with no external dependencies except Go and Bash, so this should not increase the size of your repository too much.

A simple way to do this, is to use Go's vendor tool, which stores a local copy of the source code of packages used, inside the local directory, in a sub-directory called "vendor".

To do this, execute the following command:

go mod vendor

Then, to make sure the code is included in your git history, make sure to add it to git:

git add vendor
git commit -m "Add vendored version of SciPipe"

Run your workflow

Now youa re ready to run the workflow. To run a .go file, just use go run <script-file>, e.g:

go run myfirstworkflow.go

Some tips about editors

In order to be productive with SciPipe, you will also need a Go editor or IDE with support for auto-completion, sometimes also called "intellisense".

We can warmly recommend to use one of these editors, sorted by level of endorsement:

  1. Visual Studio Code with the Go plugin - If you want a very powerful almost IDE-like editor
  2. The vim-go plugin by Fatih - if you are a Vim power-user, or need a terminal-only complement to VSCode.
  3. JetBrain's GoLand IDE, if you are ready to pay for maximum code intelligence in a professional IDE.
  4. LiteIDE - if you want a simple, robust and fast standalone Go-editor.

There are also popular Go-plugins for Sublime text, Atom and IntelliJ IDEA, and an upcoming Go IDE from JetBrains, called