Use containers for configuring software environment? about shell-genomics

[aschuerch]

Thank you @standage and sorry for the delay in addressing this issue. I think a Docker image would provide flexibility from the current approach and would be a good way to be able to set up the workshop on a different infrastructure. Therefore your suggestion concerns the whole genomics-workshop and not only the shell lesson, and I took the liberty to open an issue at datacarpentry/genomics-workshop#28

[swang8]

@standage it's great to have a Docker image. I went through the contents of shell-genomics, did't seem to see any specific software/tools are required. So for this particular lesson, Docker image is not urgent to have; but for other lessons that require specific tools, Docker image is very useful.

[standage]

For sure. Some of the genomics materials are organized by topic, and I think this is great. Some of the materials are organized by hardware. Something like Docker should make this latter distinction unnecessary, and would presumably reduce the burden for all involved in teaching workshops and maintaining materials.

[aschuerch]

As we seem to agree that this should be taken up for the workshop as a whole (datacarpentry/genomics-workshop#28) I will close this issue here. Thank you @standage for bringing this up.