Maneage is a customizable workflow controller program (implemented in GNU Make), providing low-level control over a project's data lineage and the version controlled history of the data lineage (implemented in Git). Data lineage or data provenance refer to keeping track of how data evolves within a project. For example the process of converting raw data from external data bases to a final plot in the published paper/report (this usually involves many different analysis steps and depends on many software packages). Therefore Maneage is used for reproducible research (which is a critical issue for the integrity of modern scientific results). The name "Maneage" is a portmanteau; created by merging the first three characters of "manage" with the last four characters of "lineage".

Maneage is free software and released under GNU GPL v3+. Maneage is a program, not a service. This means that you download a copy of Maneage and install a copy on your own machine. Then your copy does the work. Since Maneage is free/libre software, you can change your copy. Therefore, you have full control over what it does. To learn more about its founding criteria and a basic introduction, see Akhlaghi et al. (CiSE 2021, vol 23, issue 3, pp 82-91), also available as arXiv:2006.03018 (with extended appendix in one PDF: the recommended format). Maneage is a recipient of the RDA Europe Adoption grant and was featured in a Nature Astronomy "News and Views" article (Kuttel 2021, free-to-read link). You can also watch the short "Video presentation of Maneage" below, or see this published RDA Adoption story (a short PDF).

Video presentation of Maneage:

In the box below, you can watch a video of an invited talk at the "Reproducibility and Open Science in Astronomy" (ROSA2022) workshop that was organized by the European Southern Observatory (ESO) and held in May 2022. It is 32 minutes, hosted on PeerTube). For a more detailed talk (80 minutes), see this invited lecture at CiTIUS (link opens in PeerTube). The slides are also available as PDF.

If the video doesn't load after clicking on it, you are probably viewing this page through the HTTP protocol. You have three solutions: 1) either revisit this page through HTTPS at https://maneage.org. 2) watch the video directly on PeerTube. 3) Download the video.

Start building your project in Maneage

To start a new project, simply run these commands to clone it from its Git repository. 

git clone https://git.maneage.org/project.git     # Clone Maneage, default branch `maneage'.
mv project my-project && cd my-project            # Set custom name and enter directory.
git remote rename origin origin-maneage           # Rename remote server to use `origin' later.
git checkout -b main                              # Make new `main' branch, start customizing.

You are now ready to configure and make the raw template with the commands below. If they are successful, you can start customizing it. 

./project configure    # Build all necessary software from source.
./project make         # Do the analysis (download data, run software on data, build PDF).

See the Customization Checklist in the cloned README-hacking.md file for the next steps to start customizing Maneage for your project.

Messaging rooms for direct contact

Maneage uses the Matrix protocol for fast, robust and free communication between the developers and users. The top-level Maneage "Space" (which collects the Maneage-related rooms) is available at #maneage:matrix.org. The available list of rooms are:

How can I access Matrix-based messaging rooms? There are many clients for the Matrix protocol for web-based, smartphone or Desktop (GUI or command-line). One suggested client can be Element, which has both a web-based interface (only requiring a modern browser), a GUI desktop application, or smartphone apps.

Merge/Pull requests

As you continue customizing Maneage for your own project, you will notice generic improvements that can be useful for other projects too. In such cases, please send us those changes to implement in the core Maneage branch and let them propagate to all projects using it. If you look through the history of the Maneage branch, you'll notice many users have already started doing this, and this is how Maneage is planned to grow. The recommended process is very similar to this forking tutorial. Here is a summary:

  1. Go to the maneage branch and create a new branch from there like below: 
    git checkout maneage
git branch -b my-fix
  2. Commit your fix over this new branch (see these commit message guidelines).
  3. Build a new project on your favorite Git repository (GitLab, BitBucket, or GitHub for example) and assign it to a new Git remote in your project. Let's call it my-remote. You only need to do this once and keep this for future fixes.
  4. Push your branch to that remote: 
    git push my-remote my-fix
  5. Submit a link to your fork and the corresponding branch on Savannah. If you are registered on Savannah, you can also submit it as a bug or a task.

Supporting organizations: