About the Laptop-to-Cluster Guide

What this project is, who it serves, and what each milestone covers.

What this is

A public guide that helps scientific software practitioners translate multi-service Docker Compose stacks into scheduler-managed, rootless-container workflows on shared HPC. It is the output of the 2026 BSSw Fellowship, running April 2026 through April 2027.

Who it is for

Practitioners adapting their own stack, educators teaching the model, and fellowship reviewers examining the published work. All content is public and requires no account.

Milestone roadmap

Scroll horizontally to view all table columns.

Milestone Due Focus Status
1 Jul 2026 Foundation: project site and public repo, first two modules, baseline single-node workflow on Slurm + Apptainer Delivered
2 Dec 2026 Portability: Slurm and PBS launch templates, Apptainer/Charliecloud patterns, container union (one shared dependency tree reused across several containers), community dissemination In progress
3 Mar 2027 Training: reusable training packages, container-first Python guidance Planned
4 Apr 2027 Release: adoption checklist, HPC Best Practices webinar, BSSw.io post, v1.0 tag Planned

Each milestone is scoped to what has actually been run, not what should work in principle. Milestone 1 is a single-node baseline validated on Anvil. It does not claim one launch script runs unchanged at every center. Where a pattern has been tested on one system and not others, the module says which.

Authority

The fellowship Statement of Work controls deliverables and dates. Official BSSw program material provides program context. Prior-fellow examples inform project-adopted practices but do not create program obligations.