June 1, 2022

Standalone reana-client executables for Linux systems

The usual way of creating, executing and managing REANA workflows is by means of the reana-client command-line tool. However, installing reana-client can be painful in certain situations, for example when it conflicts with your other Python project dependencies and you don’t want to be switching Python virtual environments all the time. In these cases, using a fully standalone reana-client executable would be desirable.

As of REANA 0.8.0, we have started publishing standalone reana-client executables for Linux operating systems using the AppImage technology. Each published application executable bundles the reana-client command-line tool together with Python and all the necessary dependent libraries so that the client can run fully independently of your local environment.

You can download reana-client standalone executables from our GitHub releases page, for example:

$ wget https://github.com/reanahub/reana-client/releases/download/0.8.1/reana-client-0.8.1-x86_64.AppImage

Then you can place the executable into some convenient directory found in your PATH, such as $HOME/.local/bin:

$ chmod u+x ./reana-client-0.8.1-x86_64.AppImage
$ mv ./reana-client-0.8.1-x86_64.AppImage $HOME/.local/bin/reana-client-0.8.1

You will now be able to use the reana-client-0.8.1 executable from anywhere:

$ cd myanalysis
$ reana-client-0.8.1 ping
REANA server: https://reana.cern.ch
REANA server version: 0.9.0a5
REANA client version: 0.8.1
Authenticated as: John Doe <john.doe@example.org>
Status: Connected

Please note that the reana-client AppImage executable format works only on Linux operating systems. It should be supported by all major Linux distributions. Please let us know if you encounter any troubles on your favourite Linux distribution.

If you are using another operating system, such as macOS, you will not be able to use these executables. But don’t worry! We are considering creating statically-linked cross-platform reana-client executables using Go programming language in the near future. Stay tuned for more news later in the year.

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