Researchers can create their own environments (also called "pipelines", "workflows", "software suites", "sandboxes", etc) locally in their own computer, and later send this environment (which gets compiled to a single file) to the cluster where it can be executed, with the following advantages:
- You don't need admin privileges (root access, sudo, etc)
- You don't need to ask the admin to install anything
- install singularity on your local computer
- create a writable container (called a "sandbox")
- shell ("enter") into the container with the --writable option and tinker with it interactively (install whatever you want)
- record changes that you like in your definition file (optional)
- rebuild the container from the definition file if you break it
- rinse and repeat until you are happy with the result
- rebuild the container from the final definition file as a read-only singularity image format (SIF) image for use in the cluster
- send this .SIF file to the cluster, and execute it there using singularity. You can use the typical "ftp" or "scp" programs.