Singularity-compose named volumes

[PauloMigAlmeida]

something that it would be nice for us to start thinking before writing any code... another thing I would love to have on singularity-compose is to be able to create volumes and reference them by name rather than path.

Usually docker create these persistent volumes under $HOME/.docker and I was thinking about using a path along the same train of thought.

I cannot count how many times I've (accidentally) deleted my 'persistent' paths before as I'm always tempted to have those mapped folders within my project directory structure 😬 There are other cases in which this is relevant (such as file system capabilities) but the key point is, if we could start thinking about this now, we can get a nice implementation shortly 😄

Originally posted by @PauloMigAlmeida in #48 (comment)

[vsoch]

hmm so would this be more appropriate to have alongside singularity? E.g., binding a named volume for singularity would need to work, and then scompose here just uses that.

[PauloMigAlmeida]

That's a fair point.

(Disclaimer: Utter speculation from my part).
For some reason I have this gut feeling that, given that they provide Binds paths and Mounts, they understand that whatever decision on how and where to manage folders outside of the singularity container should be pushed to a higher layer of management as they have already provided the means. That's where I thought singularity-compose would be a good fit.

But you are right, it won't hurt asking them first :) I will keep you posted.

[vsoch]

Also note you have two options for places to ask - as there are two versions of Singularity now!

• https://github.com/sylabs/singularity
• https://github.com/hpcng/singularity

Would be interesting to see answers from both sides!