SCIF history

[vsoch]

Heyo! So I was looking at the current docs, and there seems to be mention of the scientific filesystem functionality in the recipe section:

https://sylabs.io/guides/3.7/user-guide/definition_files.html#apps

and then in an old tutorial from the days of 2.x.

https://sylabs.io/guides/3.7/user-guide/running_services.html?highlight=scif#making-it-fancy

But there isn't any mention of SCIF beyond that. We used to have an entire page for SCIF: https://singularity.lbl.gov/archive/docs/v2-4/docs-scif-apps and while I don't think an entire dedicated page is essential, I think at least some small amount of background or link to the standard would be important - e.g., if someone else is reading about a container having apps / multiple entrypoints and environments they could see that it's not something specific to singularity, but a standard they could implement too. I'm not sure about Sylabs plans for SCIF (there was discussion of making it a plugin, which if that removes it working by default, I would be against because there is no other means, as far as I can tell, to create multiple entrypoints, environments, labels, runscripts, help sections, etc. for a single container) but I think the history around its development should not just be omit as it currently is. Could any of the content from the original writeup be integrated back into the site, even a small section / shoutout at the end of the app section to learn/read more about it?

[dtrudg]

Hi @vsoch - I think it's certainly a valid request to get that context back in there. I know there was an intention from some (preceding my greater involvement in Singularity 3.x) that the SCIF functionality would become a plugin, but that has never actually happened.

Can address this for the SingularityCE 3.8.0 docs that'll come out with the release in about 2 weeks.

[vsoch]

That sounds great, thank you! 🙏