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September 2020 Galaxy Release (v 20.09)

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Highlights

Pluggable Upload Components - Dropbox & WebDav

@jmchilton has written a new pluggable interface for upload sources. He has initially added two new backends, you can now import data from Dropbox and any WebDav servers you might have access to. This work also makes it easier for developers to add support for other, new personal data sources in the future.

An example of a Dropbox account:

Screenshot of Dropbox with a "bams" folder and several test files

There will be a new button for “Choose Remote files”, when sources are configured, and then you will be able to see and search across all of the remote data locations to which you might have access.

Search across sources. A modal dialog showing a new "Dropbox" folder amongst "FTP Directory" and library location.

You will be able to see and load your files easily in Galaxy!

Screenshot of the same files from the Dropbox screenshot, accessible in Galaxy.

The admin will need to configure this feature, and then you will need to provide your credentials for these services in Galaxy’s user preferences, if you want to use them. Ask you admin!

GTN In Galaxy

During the BCC2020 CoFest, @hexylena and @shiltemann worked together to add support for accessing Galaxy Training Network tutorials from within Galaxy. The graduation cap icon will activate the interface.

For updated tutorials, tools will be highlighted as blue buttons. When clicked, these buttons will hide the GTN and take you directly to the correct version of the correct tool within the Galaxy interface. No more time spent figuring out which “cut” tool the tutorial author meant! And when you’re ready, you can easily jump back to the training materials.

Thanks @pvanheus for the video of it in action!

Upload Directly from the Tool Form

Did you ever start configuring a tool but forgot to upload your datasets first? And had to start over? Now you can upload datasets directly in the tool form thanks to @jmchilton. Pull Request 9809

Improved Workflow Layout Algorithm

The old automatic workflow layout algorithm liked to hide the flow of data within your workflow

Screenshot of a large workflow in Galaxy. Many connections go behind tools and are hard to follow.

So we have replaced the layout algorithm with a newer one which should make the flow of data within your workflows easier to understand. You will still probably want to make manual adjustments after the automatic layout, but hopefully this will save you some time.

Screenshot of a large workflow in Galaxy. Many connections go behind tools and are hard to follow.

Workflow Reporting Improvements

When one or more workflows are submitted, the status page reporting on those workflow(s) and their reports has been improved!

Improved workflow report listing showing a workflow generating 4 histories, with individual reports. `Pull Request 9978`_

Several new functions have been added to the Workflow Report syntax, which you can use in your reports. Thanks @OlegZharkov! Pull Request 9938

  • invocation-time - The iso time of the workflow invocation time.

  • generate-time - The iso time of the time of generation of the Markdown.

  • generate-galaxy-version - The Galaxy MAJOR_VERSION at the time of generation of the Markdown.

  • dataset-type - The ext/format/datatype of the target dataset.

  • dataset-name - The name of the target dataset.

You can self-delete your account

In (hopefully) rare cases, you might want to close your account and delete the associated data. @astrovsky01 has implemented user self-deletion, so you no longer need to request an admin to do this for you and wait for their response. Pull Request 10107

New Visualizations

GalaxyP MVP visualization plugin (thanks to @tmcgowan). Pull Request 10136

Screenshot of the MVP visualisation. Described below.

From their associated paper:

[The MVP App] displays this example data where the list of variant peptides are shown in the Peptide Overview window (A). One of these peptides (sequence DGDLENPVLYSGAVK) has been selected in this list, and the button “PSMs for Selected Peptides” clicked to display the 2 PSMs that matched to this sequence, along with associated scoring metrics (B). Double-clicking on one of these PSMs opens the Lorikeet MS/MS viewer (C). Lorikeet [29] renders MS/MS spectra, providing a visualization of the annotated spectra that led to a PSM using the upstream sequence database searching software. C shows an example PSM, where the blue- and red-colored m/z peak values correspond to amino acid fragments that would be predicted to derive from the peptide sequence identified by this PSM

New Datatypes

Several community members and committers (@stevecassidy, @hexylena, @anuprulez, and @bgruening, @mvdbeek) worked together from 2017 on, to add datatypes for Audio & Video datatypes. This PR is now merged and available in Galaxies everywhere. This additionally includes a specific visualisation for these files allowing you to view the audio or video media directly in Galaxy. Pull Request 4949

Screenshot of the video visualisation plugin activated in Galaxy with a paused video displayed in the main panel.

Support for mkv, mp4, flv, mpg video containers, as well as mp3, wav, TextGrid, and BPF audio formats is included.

Builtin Tool Updates

Release Notes

Please see the full release notes for more details.

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Thanks for using Galaxy!

The Galaxy Team