Module file versioning

[drpatelh]

We need to come up with a way to version each module or at least be able to use a particular version of a module within the main pipeline script. Through previous discussions we have somewhat agreed that we need to be able to do this via git commit as we are able to do with nf-core/configs. Whether we are able to do this at the level of individual module files or a commit id for the entire nf-core/modules repo is still up for discussion.

[ewels]

See #8 for an idea on how to handle this in pipelines. That approach enforces an answer for this issue.

[junjun-zhang]

@drpatelh we are experimenting a solution to do just that, ie, versioning individual modules. Here is one of our modules/tools: bwa-mem-aligner.nf. Note that each module/tool is completely self-sufficient and accompanied with its own docker image. Although the github repo includes many modules/tools, we release each of them independently, eg, bwa-mem-aligner.0.1.3.0. This may seem controversial, but it has been practised by GO language, see sdk/v0.3.0, api/v1.30 and v1.6.2, all of them are from the same GitHub repo: hashicorp/consul.

In terms importing specific version of the module files into pipeline code, we first make hard copies of these files in the github repo of the pipeline code, eg, under here, then include them into the pipeline code like this.

This is more of an attempt from us, but it works well for our needs so far. Se ongoing discussion regarding the importing mechanism in #8 as @ewels pointed out. We'd love to hear thoughts from other community members.

[drpatelh]

See #2 (comment)