Status and Prospects of Kanki : An Open Source Cross-Platform Native iRODS Client Application

Abstract

The current state of development of project Kanki is discussed and some prospects for future development are laid out with reflection on the results of the research IT infrastructure project at the University of Jyväskylä. Kanki is a crossplatform native iRODS client application which was introduced to the iRODS community at the iRODS Users Group Meeting in 2015, and later released as open source. A total of 9 releases have been made, from which the latest 6 have been available in addition to the source code as pre-built binary packages for x86-64 CentOS Linux 6/7 and OS X 10.10+. The Kanki build environment at the University of Jyväskylä is running out of Jenkins continuous integration for both previously mentioned platforms utilizing disposable containers instantiated from pre-built Docker images for Linux builds. This provides an excellent framework for (regression) testing of the client suite. The immediate goals of development include: stability, testing, ease of install and use, and a complete iRODS basic feature set for graphical icommands alternatives. The prospects for more advanced future development include: a fully extensible modular metadata editor with pluggable attribute editor widgets, a fully extensible modular search user interface with pluggable condition widgets, data grid analytics, and visualization with VTK integration.