Support virtual machine images

[joncison]

This has often been requested

We want a link to the image (or a repo) with light-weight metadata, i..e not everything listed here:
http://docs.openstack.org/image-guide/image-metadata.html

Maybe just the disk and container format?

[matuskalas]

Would it be enough to support URL links to VM images?

It should perhaps be done in exactly the same way as supporting software containers, i.e. e.g. via links to BioShaDock (https://github.com/osallou/bioshadock), but not limited to those.

The https://github.com/bio-tools/biotoolsregistry could even recognise some major repositories (i.e. e.g. the BioShaDock) and show basic information pulled from there.

[joncison]

Not quite, I think we also need to support annotation of the image / container format. At least, doing so would be super-useful at low cost. For the rest of the data, I agree bio.tool can pull that from whatever repo.

[matuskalas]

I agree.

Then we need to collate a tiny "ontology" of VM-image and SW-container formats/platforms. Perhaps some virtualisation and container geek(s) with a broad overview could help. What about coming up with something to start with first, and then refine it for example at the next Tools|Workflows|Workbenches hackathon, tentatively in January 2017?

[joncison]

Cool ... there'll be something in v2.beta of the schema (and that out soon!)

[joncison]

done in biotools-2.0-beta01