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Maniphest T337

specify a manifest format for documenting archived software
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Description

To support the use case of scientists willing to document the software relevant for a given paper, we want to have a manifest format capable of fully describing some software archived by Software Heritage.

In its essence, a manifest should point to Software Heritage objects using the URI scheme of T335.
But then, different level of details are possible:

  • (minimum detail) just point to a manifest file archived somewhere (possibly on SWH), using a manifest ID
  • point to a directory
  • fully describe the directory content, with a pair <pathname, content id> for each file
  • (maximum detail) as above + a revision history, describing each revision in full ← this will be crazy-large for long histories

In addition to the above, various kinds of metadata could be added:

  • SWH-specific metadata: when and where the archived code has been found
  • user-provided metadata, submitted to SWH at the time of ingestion request (e.g., Dublin Core, paper references, etc.)

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Event Timeline

zack created this task.Mar 4 2016, 1:05 PM
Herald added a project: Staff. · View Herald TranscriptMar 4 2016, 1:05 PM
zack added a subtask: T335: specify the URI scheme swh:... to point to software heritage objects.Mar 4 2016, 1:05 PM
zack mentioned this in T338: manifest browser / renderer.Mar 4 2016, 1:07 PM
zack added a parent task: T338: manifest browser / renderer.
rdicosmo added a subscriber: rdicosmo.Mar 5 2016, 12:31 PM

Depending on the form of the archived code, and the needs of the user that reference it, a variety of different references may be needed
Here is the original list from the team meeting, that completes the one mentioned in the ticket.

  • raw hash (optional): the hash of the physical binary object ingested, if it is an archive (tar, zip, etc.)
  • Tree hash: hash of the tree object in our store containing the directory with the (extracted) source code
  • Committ hash: hash of the commit object in our store containing the specified commit in the ingested VCS
  • Manifest: extended document containing a variety of detailed informations (some of which are optional)
    • the ls -R of the (current version of) the source code directory, with hashes of the content files
    • raw hash
    • tree hash
    • commit hash
    • the list of all branches in the VCS, with their hashes
    • origin
    • timestamp of SWH crawling/visit
  • Hash of the manifest

We decided to provide *all of these*, and we will *recommend* to store the manifest alongside the publications for scientific reproducibility

rdicosmo added a comment.Mar 5 2016, 12:31 PM

Important: we want to provide these informations *for all the content stored in SWH*

rdicosmo awarded a token.Mar 5 2016, 12:32 PM
zack removed projects: Developers, Staff.Mar 10 2016, 5:51 PM
zack added a project: General.Apr 1 2016, 10:15 AM
olasd changed the visibility from "All Users" to "Public (No Login Required)".May 13 2016, 5:09 PM
zack changed the status of subtask T335: specify the URI scheme swh:... to point to software heritage objects from Open to Work in Progress.Jan 12 2018, 6:11 PM
zack closed subtask T335: specify the URI scheme swh:... to point to software heritage objects as Resolved.Jan 14 2018, 10:32 PM
zack closed this task as Resolved.Oct 4 2018, 12:13 PM
zack claimed this task.
zack added a subscriber: moranegg.

The identification part of this task has been done with documenting/implementing our PIDs, the rest is more suited for the software citation work on which @moranegg is actively working.

gitlab-migration changed the task status from Resolved to Migrated.Jan 8 2023, 9:56 PM
gitlab-migration claimed this task.
gitlab-migration changed the status of subtask T335: specify the URI scheme swh:... to point to software heritage objects from Resolved to Migrated.
gitlab-migration added a subscriber: gitlab-migration.

This task has been migrated to GitLab.

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