A python package with helper tools for the nf-core community.
Read this documentation on the nf-core website: https://nf-co.re/tools
nf-core
tools installationnf-core list
- List available pipelinesnf-core launch
- Run a pipeline with interactive parameter promptsnf-core download
- Download pipeline for offline usenf-core licences
- List software licences in a pipelinenf-core create
- Create a new workflow from the nf-core templatenf-core lint
- Check pipeline code against nf-core guidelinesnf-core schema
- Work with pipeline schema filesnf-core bump-version
- Update nf-core pipeline version numbernf-core sync
- Synchronise pipeline TEMPLATE branches- Citation
The nf-core tools package is written in Python and can be imported and used within other packages. For documentation of the internal Python functions, please refer to the Tools Python API docs.
You can install nf-core/tools
from bioconda.
First, install conda and configure the channels to use bioconda (see the bioconda documentation). Then, just run the conda installation command:
conda install nf-core
Alternatively, you can create a new environment with both nf-core/tools and nextflow:
conda create --name nf-core python=3.7 nf-core nextflow
conda activate nf-core
nf-core/tools
can also be installed from PyPI using pip as follows:
pip install nf-core
If you would like the latest development version of tools, the command is:
pip install --upgrade --force-reinstall git+https://github.com/nf-core/tools.git@dev
If you intend to make edits to the code, first make a fork of the repository and then clone it locally. Go to the cloned directory and either install with pip:
pip install -e .
Or install directly using Python:
python setup.py develop
The command nf-core list
shows all available nf-core pipelines along with their latest version, when that was published and how recently the pipeline code was pulled to your local system (if at all).
An example of the output from the command is as follows:
$ nf-core list
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Name Version Released Last Pulled Have latest release?
------------------------- --------- ------------ -------------- ----------------------
nf-core/rnaseq 1.3 4 days ago 27 minutes ago Yes
nf-core/hlatyping 1.1.4 3 weeks ago 1 months ago No
nf-core/eager 2.0.6 3 weeks ago - -
nf-core/mhcquant 1.2.6 3 weeks ago - -
nf-core/rnafusion 1.0 1 months ago - -
nf-core/methylseq 1.3 1 months ago 3 months ago No
nf-core/ampliseq 1.0.0 3 months ago - -
nf-core/deepvariant 1.0 4 months ago - -
nf-core/atacseq dev - 1 months ago No
nf-core/bacass dev - - -
nf-core/bcellmagic dev - - -
nf-core/chipseq dev - 1 months ago No
nf-core/clinvap dev - - -
To narrow down the list, supply one or more additional keywords to filter the pipelines based on matches in titles, descriptions and topics:
$ nf-core list rna rna-seq
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Name Version Released Last Pulled Have latest release?
----------------- --------- ------------ -------------- ----------------------
nf-core/rnaseq 1.3 4 days ago 28 minutes ago Yes
nf-core/rnafusion 1.0 1 months ago - -
nf-core/lncpipe dev - - -
nf-core/smrnaseq dev - - -
You can sort the results by latest release (-s release
, default),
when you last pulled a local copy (-s pulled
),
alphabetically (-s name
),
or number of GitHub stars (-s stars
).
$ nf-core list -s stars
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Name Stargazers Version Released Last Pulled Have latest release?
------------------------- ------------ --------- ------------ -------------- ----------------------
nf-core/rnaseq 81 1.3 4 days ago 30 minutes ago Yes
nf-core/methylseq 22 1.3 1 months ago 3 months ago No
nf-core/ampliseq 21 1.0.0 3 months ago - -
nf-core/chipseq 20 dev - 1 months ago No
nf-core/deepvariant 15 1.0 4 months ago - -
nf-core/eager 14 2.0.6 3 weeks ago - -
nf-core/rnafusion 14 1.0 1 months ago - -
nf-core/lncpipe 9 dev - - -
nf-core/exoseq 8 dev - - -
nf-core/mag 8 dev - - -
Finally, to return machine-readable JSON output, use the --json
flag.
Some nextflow pipelines have a considerable number of command line flags that can be used.
To help with this, the nf-core launch
command uses an interactive command-line wizard tool to prompt you for
values for running nextflow and the pipeline parameters.
The tool uses the nextflow_schema.json
file from a pipeline to give parameter descriptions, defaults and grouping.
If no file for the pipeline is found, one will be automatically generated at runtime.
Nextflow params
variables are saved in to a JSON file called nf-params.json
and used by nextflow with the -params-file
flag.
This makes it easier to reuse these in the future.
The nf-core launch
command is an interactive command line tool and prompts you to overwrite the default values for each parameter.
Entering ?
for any parameter will give a full description from the documentation of what that value does.
$ nf-core launch rnaseq
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nf-core/tools version 1.10.dev0
INFO: [✓] Pipeline schema looks valid
INFO: This tool ignores any pipeline parameter defaults overwritten by Nextflow config files or profiles
? Nextflow command-line flags (Use arrow keys)
❯ Continue >>
---------------
-name
-revision
-profile
-work-dir
-resume
Once complete, the wizard will ask you if you want to launch the Nextflow run.
If not, you can copy and paste the Nextflow command with the nf-params.json
file of your inputs.
? Nextflow command-line flags Continue >>
? Input/output options input
Input FastQ files. (? for help)
? input data/*{1,2}.fq.gz
? Input/output options Continue >>
? Reference genome options Continue >>
INFO: [✓] Input parameters look valid
INFO: Nextflow command:
nextflow run nf-core-testpipeline/ -params-file "nf-params.json"
Do you want to run this command now? [y/N]: n
-c
,--command-only
- If you prefer not to save your inputs in a JSON file and use
-params-file
, this option will specify all entered params directly in the nextflow command.
- If you prefer not to save your inputs in a JSON file and use
-p
,--params-in PATH
- To use values entered in a previous pipeline run, you can supply the
nf-params.json
file previously generated. - This will overwrite the pipeline schema defaults before the wizard is launched.
- To use values entered in a previous pipeline run, you can supply the
-o
,--params-out PATH
- Path to save parameters JSON file to. (Default:
nf-params.json
)
- Path to save parameters JSON file to. (Default:
-a
,--save-all
- Without this option the pipeline will ignore any values that match the pipeline schema defaults.
- This option saves all parameters found to the JSON file.
-h
,--show-hidden
- A pipeline JSON schema can define some parameters as 'hidden' if they are rarely used or for internal pipeline use only.
- This option forces the wizard to show all parameters, including those labelled as 'hidden'.
Sometimes you may need to run an nf-core pipeline on a server or HPC system that has no internet connection. In this case you will need to fetch the pipeline files first, then manually transfer them to your system.
To make this process easier and ensure accurate retrieval of correctly versioned code and software containers, we have written a download helper tool. Simply specify the name of the nf-core pipeline and it will be downloaded to your current working directory.
By default, the pipeline will download the pipeline code and the institutional nf-core/configs files.
If you specify the flag --singularity
, it will also download any singularity image files that are required.
Use -r
/--release
to download a specific release of the pipeline. If not specified, the tool will automatically fetch the latest release.
$ nf-core download methylseq -r 1.4 --singularity
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INFO: Saving methylseq
Pipeline release: 1.4
Pull singularity containers: Yes
Output file: nf-core-methylseq-1.4.tar.gz
INFO: Downloading workflow files from GitHub
INFO: Downloading centralised configs from GitHub
INFO: Downloading 1 singularity container
INFO: Building singularity image from Docker Hub: docker://nfcore/methylseq:1.4
INFO: Converting OCI blobs to SIF format
INFO: Starting build...
Getting image source signatures
....
INFO: Creating SIF file...
INFO: Build complete: /my-pipelines/nf-core-methylseq-1.4/singularity-images/nf-core-methylseq-1.4.simg
INFO: Compressing download..
INFO: Command to extract files: tar -xzf nf-core-methylseq-1.4.tar.gz
INFO: MD5 checksum for nf-core-methylseq-1.4.tar.gz: f5c2b035619967bb227230bc3ec986c5
The tool automatically compresses all of the resulting file in to a .tar.gz
archive.
You can choose other formats (.tar.bz2
, zip
) or to not compress (none
) with the -c
/--compress
flag.
The console output provides the command you need to extract the files.
Once uncompressed, you will see the following file structure for the downloaded pipeline:
$ tree -L 2 nf-core-methylseq-1.4/
nf-core-methylseq-1.4
├── configs
│ ├── bin
│ ├── conf
│ ├── configtest.nf
│ ├── docs
│ ├── LICENSE
│ ├── nextflow.config
│ ├── nfcore_custom.config
│ └── README.md
├── singularity-images
│ └── nf-core-methylseq-1.4.simg
└── workflow
├── assets
├── bin
├── CHANGELOG.md
├── CODE_OF_CONDUCT.md
├── conf
├── Dockerfile
├── docs
├── environment.yml
├── LICENSE
├── main.nf
├── nextflow.config
├── nextflow_schema.json
└── README.md
10 directories, 15 files
The pipeline files are automatically updated so that the local copy of institutional configs are available when running the pipeline.
So using -profile <NAME>
should work if available within nf-core/configs.
You can run the pipeline by simply providing the directory path for the workflow
folder.
Note that if using Singularity, you will also need to provide the path to the Singularity image.
For example:
nextflow run /path/to/nf-core-methylseq-1.4/workflow/ \
-profile singularity \
-with-singularity /path/to/nf-core-methylseq-1.4/singularity-images/nf-core-methylseq-1.4.simg \
# .. other normal pipeline parameters from here on..
--input '*_R{1,2}.fastq.gz' --genome GRCh38
Sometimes it's useful to see the software licences of the tools used in a pipeline. You can use the licences
subcommand to fetch and print the software licence from each conda / PyPI package used in an nf-core pipeline.
$ nf-core licences rnaseq
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INFO: Warning: This tool only prints licence information for the software tools packaged using conda.
The pipeline may use other software and dependencies not described here.
Package Name Version Licence
--------------------- --------- --------------------
stringtie 1.3.3 Artistic License 2.0
preseq 2.0.3 GPL
trim-galore 0.4.5 GPL
bioconductor-edger 3.20.7 GPL >=2
fastqc 0.11.7 GPL >=3
openjdk 8.0.144 GPLv2
r-gplots 3.0.1 GPLv2
r-markdown 0.8 GPLv2
rseqc 2.6.4 GPLv2
bioconductor-dupradar 1.8.0 GPLv3
hisat2 2.1.0 GPLv3
multiqc 1.5 GPLv3
r-data.table 1.10.4 GPLv3
star 2.5.4a GPLv3
subread 1.6.1 GPLv3
picard 2.18.2 MIT
samtools 1.8 MIT
The create
subcommand makes a new workflow using the nf-core base template.
With a given pipeline name, description and author, it makes a starter pipeline which follows nf-core best practices.
After creating the files, the command initialises the folder as a git repository and makes an initial commit. This first "vanilla" commit which is identical to the output from the templating tool is important, as it allows us to keep your pipeline in sync with the base template in the future. See the nf-core syncing docs for more information.
$ nf-core create
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Workflow Name: nextbigthing
Description: This pipeline analyses data from the next big 'omics technique
Author: Big Steve
INFO: Creating new nf-core pipeline: nf-core/nextbigthing
INFO: Initialising pipeline git repository
INFO: Done. Remember to add a remote and push to GitHub:
cd /path/to/nf-core-nextbigthing
git remote add origin git@github.com:USERNAME/REPO_NAME.git
git push --all origin
INFO: This will also push your newly created dev branch and the TEMPLATE branch for syncing.
INFO: !!!!!! IMPORTANT !!!!!!
If you are interested in adding your pipeline to the nf-core community,
PLEASE COME AND TALK TO US IN THE NF-CORE SLACK BEFORE WRITING ANY CODE!
Please read: https://nf-co.re/developers/adding_pipelines#join-the-community
Once you have run the command, create a new empty repository on GitHub under your username (not the nf-core
organisation, yet) and push the commits from your computer using the example commands in the above log.
You can then continue to edit, commit and push normally as you build your pipeline.
Please see the nf-core documentation for a full walkthrough of how to create a new nf-core workflow.
Note that if the required arguments for nf-core create
are not given, it will interactively prompt for them. If you prefer, you can supply them as command line arguments. See nf-core create --help
for more information.
The lint
subcommand checks a given pipeline for all nf-core community guidelines.
This is the same test that is used on the automated continuous integration tests.
For example, the current version looks something like this:
$ cd path/to/my_pipeline
$ nf-core lint .
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Running pipeline tests [####################################] 100% None
INFO: ===========
LINTING RESULTS
=================
72 tests passed 2 tests had warnings 0 tests failed
WARNING: Test Warnings:
https://nf-co.re/errors#8: Conda package is not latest available: picard=2.18.2, 2.18.6 available
https://nf-co.re/errors#8: Conda package is not latest available: bwameth=0.2.0, 0.2.1 available
You can find extensive documentation about each of the lint tests in the lint errors documentation.
nf-core pipelines have a nextflow_schema.json
file in their root which describes the different parameters used by the workflow.
These files allow automated validation of inputs when running the pipeline, are used to generate command line help and can be used to build interfaces to launch pipelines.
Pipeline schema files are built according to the JSONSchema specification (Draft 7).
To help developers working with pipeline schema, nf-core tools has three schema
sub-commands:
nf-core schema validate
nf-core schema build
nf-core schema lint
Nextflow can take input parameters in a JSON or YAML file when running a pipeline using the -params-file
option.
This command validates such a file against the pipeline schema.
Usage is nextflow schema validate <pipeline> --params <parameter file>
, eg:
$ nf-core schema validate my_pipeline --params my_inputs.json
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INFO: [✓] Pipeline schema looks valid
ERROR: [✗] Input parameters are invalid: 'input' is a required property
The pipeline
option can be a directory containing a pipeline, a path to a schema file or the name of an nf-core pipeline (which will be downloaded using nextflow pull
).
Manually building JSONSchema documents is not trivial and can be very error prone.
Instead, the nf-core schema build
command collects your pipeline parameters and gives interactive prompts about any missing or unexpected params.
If no existing schema is found it will create one for you.
Once built, the tool can send the schema to the nf-core website so that you can use a graphical interface to organise and fill in the schema. The tool checks the status of your schema on the website and once complete, saves your changes locally.
Usage is nextflow schema build <pipeline_directory>
, eg:
$ nf-core schema build nf-core-testpipeline
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INFO: Loaded existing JSON schema with 18 params: nf-core-testpipeline/nextflow_schema.json
Unrecognised 'params.old_param' found in schema but not in Nextflow config. Remove it? [Y/n]:
Unrecognised 'params.we_removed_this_too' found in schema but not in Nextflow config. Remove it? [Y/n]:
INFO: Removed 2 params from existing JSON Schema that were not found with `nextflow config`:
old_param, we_removed_this_too
Found 'params.input' in Nextflow config. Add to JSON Schema? [Y/n]:
Found 'params.outdir' in Nextflow config. Add to JSON Schema? [Y/n]:
INFO: Added 2 params to JSON Schema that were found with `nextflow config`:
input, outdir
INFO: Writing JSON schema with 18 params: nf-core-testpipeline/nextflow_schema.json
Launch web builder for customisation and editing? [Y/n]:
INFO: Opening URL: http://localhost:8888/json_schema_build?id=1584441828_b990ac785cd6
INFO: Waiting for form to be completed in the browser. Use ctrl+c to stop waiting and force exit.
..........
INFO: Found saved status from nf-core JSON Schema builder
INFO: Writing JSON schema with 18 params: nf-core-testpipeline/nextflow_schema.json
There are three flags that you can use with this command:
--no-prompts
: Make changes without prompting for confirmation each time. Does not launch web tool.--web-only
: Skips comparison of the schema against the pipeline parameters and only launches the web tool.--url <web_address>
: Supply a custom URL for the online tool. Useful when testing locally.
The pipeline schema is linted as part of the main nf-core lint
command,
however sometimes it can be useful to quickly check the syntax of the JSONSchema without running a full lint run.
Usage is nextflow schema lint <schema>
, eg:
$ nf-core schema lint nextflow_schema.json
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ERROR: [✗] JSON Schema does not follow nf-core specs:
Schema should have 'properties' section
When releasing a new version of a nf-core pipeline, version numbers have to be updated in several different places. The helper command nf-core bump-version
automates this for you to avoid manual errors (and frustration!).
The command uses results from the linting process, so will only work with workflows that pass these tests.
Usage is nf-core bump-version <pipeline_dir> <new_version>
, eg:
$ cd path/to/my_pipeline
$ nf-core bump-version . 1.0
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INFO: Running nf-core lint tests
Running pipeline tests [####################################] 100% None
INFO: ===========
LINTING RESULTS
=================
118 tests passed 0 tests had warnings 0 tests failed
INFO: Changing version number:
Current version number is '1.0dev'
New version number will be '1.0'
INFO: Updating version in nextflow.config
- version = '1.0dev'
+ version = '1.0'
INFO: Updating version in nextflow.config
- process.container = 'nfcore/mypipeline:dev'
+ process.container = 'nfcore/mypipeline:1.0'
INFO: Updating version in .github/workflows/ci.yml
- docker tag nfcore/mypipeline:dev nfcore/mypipeline:dev
+ docker tag nfcore/mypipeline:dev nfcore/mypipeline:1.0
INFO: Updating version in environment.yml
- name: nf-core-mypipeline-1.0dev
+ name: nf-core-mypipeline-1.0
INFO: Updating version in Dockerfile
- ENV PATH /opt/conda/envs/nf-core-mypipeline-1.0dev/bin:$PATH
- RUN conda env export --name nf-core-mypipeline-1.0dev > nf-core-mypipeline-1.0dev.yml
+ ENV PATH /opt/conda/envs/nf-core-mypipeline-1.0/bin:$PATH
+ RUN conda env export --name nf-core-mypipeline-1.0 > nf-core-mypipeline-1.0.yml
To change the required version of Nextflow instead of the pipeline version number, use the flag --nextflow
.
To export the lint results to a JSON file, use --json [filename]
. For markdown, use --markdown [filename]
.
As linting tests can give a pass state for CI but with warnings that need some effort to track down, the linting
code attempts to post a comment to the GitHub pull-request with a summary of results if possible.
It does this when the environment variables GITHUB_COMMENTS_URL
and GITHUB_TOKEN
are set and if there are
any failing or warning tests. If a pull-request is updated with new commits, the original comment will be
updated with the latest results instead of posting lots of new comments for each git push
.
A typical GitHub Actions step with the required environment variables may look like this (will only work on pull-request events):
- name: Run nf-core lint
env:
GITHUB_COMMENTS_URL: ${{ github.event.pull_request.comments_url }}
GITHUB_TOKEN: ${{ secrets.GITHUB_TOKEN }}
GITHUB_PR_COMMIT: ${{ github.event.pull_request.head.sha }}
run: nf-core lint $GITHUB_WORKSPACE
Over time, the main nf-core pipeline template is updated. To keep all nf-core pipelines up to date,
we synchronise these updates automatically when new versions of nf-core/tools are released.
This is done by maintaining a special TEMPLATE
branch, containing a vanilla copy of the nf-core template
with only the variables used when it first ran (name, description etc.). This branch is updated and a
pull-request can be made with just the updates from the main template code.
This command takes a pipeline directory and attempts to run this synchronisation.
Usage is nf-core sync <pipeline_dir>
, eg:
$ nf-core sync my_pipeline/
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INFO: Pipeline directory: /path/to/my_pipeline
INFO: Fetching workflow config variables
INFO: Deleting all files in TEMPLATE branch
INFO: Making a new template pipeline using pipeline variables
INFO: Committed changes to TEMPLATE branch
INFO: Now try to merge the updates in to your pipeline:
cd /path/to/my_pipeline
git merge TEMPLATE
If your pipeline repository does not already have a TEMPLATE
branch, you can instruct
the command to try to create one by giving the --make-template-branch
flag.
If it has to, the sync tool will then create an orphan branch - see the
nf-core website sync documentation for details on
how to handle this.
By default, the tool will collect workflow variables from the current branch in your
pipeline directory. You can supply the --from-branch
flag to specific a different branch.
Finally, if you give the --pull-request
flag, the command will push any changes to the remote
and attempt to create a pull request using the GitHub API. The GitHub username and repository
name will be fetched from the remote url (see git remote -v | grep origin
), or can be supplied
with --username
and --repository
.
To create the pull request, a personal access token is required for API authentication.
These can be created at https://github.com/settings/tokens.
Supply this using the --auth-token
flag.
Finally, if --all
is supplied, then the command attempts to pull and synchronise all nf-core workflows.
This is used by the nf-core/tools release automation to synchronise all nf-core pipelines
with the newest version of the template. It requires authentication as either the nf-core-bot account
or as an nf-core administrator.
$ nf-core sync --all
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INFO: Syncing nf-core/ampliseq
[...]
INFO: Successfully synchronised [n] pipelines
If you use nf-core tools
in your work, please cite the nf-core
publication as follows:
The nf-core framework for community-curated bioinformatics pipelines.
Philip Ewels, Alexander Peltzer, Sven Fillinger, Harshil Patel, Johannes Alneberg, Andreas Wilm, Maxime Ulysse Garcia, Paolo Di Tommaso & Sven Nahnsen.
Nat Biotechnol. 2020 Feb 13. doi: 10.1038/s41587-020-0439-x. ReadCube: Full Access Link