# Container Tools

Welcome to the container tools portal! 

[![Gitter chat](https://badges.gitter.im/gitterHQ/gitter.png)](https://gitter.im/singularityhub/lobby)

 - See the [tools here](https://singularityhub.github.io).
 - Follow [@containertools](https://www.twitter.com/containertools) on Twitter.
 - If you need help, [post an issue](https://github.com/singularityhub/singularityhub.github.io/issues)

![img/robot-banner.png](img/robot-banner.png)

## What is a Linux Container?

A container image is an encapsulated, portalable environment that is created to distribute a scientific analysis or a general function. Containers help with reproducibility of such content as they nicely package software and data dependencies, along with libraries that are needed.

## What are the goals of Container Tools?

These are open source tools for scientific containers. The tools are designed with the primary
goal to serve the scientific community. Since [Singularity](https://www.sylabs.io/guides/3.1/user-guide/) is 
a container technology that is friendly for shared computational resources common in the scientific community,
the majority of our tools use it. 

## Quick Links

 - To see the currently maintained container tools, see [the singularityhub portal](https://singularityhub.github.io).
 - To see current documentation for Singularity Hub, see [singularityhub-docs](https://singularityhub.github.io/singularityhub-docs)

## Thanks

The Container Tools and Singularity Hub is developed at Stanford University with 
support from Google Cloud. Thank you!

# Citations

 - [Singularity Hub](http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0188511).
 - [Singularity Registry](https://doi.org/10.21105/joss.00426)
 - [The Scientific Filesystem](https://doi.org/10.1093/gigascience/giy023)
 - [The Experiment Factory](https://doi.org/10.21105/joss.00521)

Please [tell us](https://www.github.com/singularityhub/singularityhub.github.io) about requests for features, or any questions that you might have.


## Get Help
- [Joining Singularity Slack](https://singularity-container.slack.com) is the quickest way to talk to the developers and other users.
- [Post an issue](https://www.github.com/singularityhub/singularityhub.github.io/issues) to this board for a question or issue about Singularity hub.
