MEIGarage as an example of collaboration on long-living research software in different research communities



Anne Ferger, Daniel Röwenstrunk | Universität Paderborn

Slides: anneferger.github.io/MEITEIGarage/deRSE23/

EGE to OxGarage

TEIC/oxgarage was created based on the ENRICH Garage Engine by the Text Encoding Initiative (TEI) community over 10 years ago and is used in many different contexts, e.g.

EGE

  • written in Java
  • licensed
  • maven based documentation still available

OxGarage

  • written in Java
  • contact to some original developers
  • research supporting software
  • published on GitHub and licensed
  • maven based documentation available

OxGarage to MEIGarage

Edirom/oxgarage was created based on OxGarage by the Music Encoding Initiative (MEI) community

OxGarage in NFDI4Culture

Goals

add further MEIGarage functionality

using (OxGarage) as a base for other research communities while allowing for more collaboration on code and making it more technically sustainable and FAIR

Working on MEIGarage in NFDI4Culture

In the framework of the NFDI4Culture project measures are taken to achieve a more sustainable and adaptable code base. These measures include a modularized, GitHub-based setup using CI and badges and checklists for FAIR software. Meetings were held for community building and sharing new developments and available documentation. The process of creating new plugins or additional "Garages" for other research communities is used to further evaluate the benefit of the measures and checking for necessary modifications.

Logo NFDI for Culture

Technical Sustainability

Current Setup

Deployment

  • Using GitHub Registry for artifacts, later Maven Central
  • CI using GitHub Actions, Maven, Docker
  • Docker and Kubernetes

Documentation and Maintenance

  • Documentation for users
  • Documentation for developers and maintainers
  • maintenance of plugins by their authors

Checklists and Badges

Integration of community specific code using plugins

Example meico

Links