Packaging Biocomputing Software to Maximize Distribution and Reuse

The majority of publications in computational biology and biocomputing develop or apply software approaches to relevant biological problems to some degree. While journals and conferences often prompt authors to make their source code available, these are often only basic requirements. Investigators often wish their software and tools were widely usable to the scientific community, but there are limited resources available to maximize the distribution and provide easy use of developed software. Even when authors adhere to standards of source code availability, the growing problem of system configuration issues, language and library version conflicts, and other implementation issues often impede the broad distribution, availability of software tools, and reproducibility of research. There are a variety of solutions to these implementation issues, but the learning curve for applying these solutions can be steep. This tutorial demonstrates tools and approaches for packaging and distribution of published code, and provides methodological practices for the broad and open sharing of new biocomputing software.