Labrador Legacy

[mweberr]

Hi,
I just came across the Labrador project first time. The approach to manage in house data and connect it to public databases is one of the currently most-demanded services I see in my bioinformatics work. As you consider Labrador a legacy project, do you know a 2021 project which focusses on the same issue ?

Best,
Michael

[ewels]

Hi @MichWeb75,

Thanks for the interest! I am not actively using or maintaining Labrador any more (and have not done so for many years now). However I believe that it is still in use by a handful of people - mostly former colleagues when they have moved on to new positions. For example, I believe that @StevenWingett set up an instance of it relatively recently. So you're very welcome to use it and further develop it, but I can't promise anything from my side.

I am not aware of any other comparable projects, but to be honest I haven't really looked either.

Phil

[StevenWingett]

Hi,

Yes I agree, Labrador is a useful project. Even though the code was written several years ago now, it generally still works fine. There are a few areas where I think a little work would greatly improve the project:

1. Creation of a dedicated Docker / Singularity container to run the website. You can see I updated the documentation a few months ago to explain how to build a Docker container to run a server. But I think a Labrador website container (with Labrador already set up on a server) uploaded to Docker hub would be would be a huge benefit and largely circumvent the legacy nature of the site.

2. Some of the data reports are not recognised by Labrador. Some work he would be very beneficial.

What do you guys think?

I had hoped to work on this some more when I started my new job, but then I moved on to other projects. Of course, I too would welcome any contributions to improve this project.

All the best,
Steven

[adeslatt]

Hi @ewels
You are amazing and this project would be great to be adopted for the emerging DRS servers for GA4GH and used for creating custom facets -- maybe one could get GA4GH to fund this so that items are not only discoverable but there maybe simple ways to request control access data as well. Just a thought. yet another unfunded mandate :).

[ewels]

Thanks @adeslatt, flattery always welcome! 😅 Even if funds were forthcoming I don't really have the bandwidth to work on Labrador now, I have a full plate with other ongoing projects. The project still trickles on though.. most recently, @FelixKrueger has been promising me pull-requests with security patches and other nice sounding upgrades 😉