Quick Start — CLI Reference

Album manages solutions (executable scientific routines) organized into catalogs (git-native, decentralized collections). The commands below let you discover, install, run, test, and share them. For background on the two primitives see usage-instructions; for the bigger picture see the welcome page.

The commands group naturally around the four phases of the research-software cycle (see Fig. 1 on the welcome page):

Phase	What you do	Album commands
Search & Explore	find and try solutions	add-catalog, update, index, info, install, run, test
Creation & Implementation	author your own solutions	clone, install [path], run [path], test [path]
Share & Scale	publish to a catalog, batch-run	deploy, run-distributed (plugin)
Finalize & Distribute	container, installer, DOI	docker / package plugins, Zenodo setup

In the listed commands solution-identifier can be replaced by:

• name - the name of the solution

• group:name - group and name of the solution

• group:name:version - the full coordinates of the solution

• catalog:group:name:version - the catalog name and the solution coordinates

• a path to a single solution python file

• a path to the solution folder containing the solution.py file

• URL (python file or zip containing solution.py)

• DOI

See usage instructions for more details.

Album basics
album help	Print help message and exit.
album index	Print all catalogs and associated solutions in your local collection.

Manage catalogs	See usage instructions for more details.
album add-catalog [catalog-directory-or-url]	Add a catalog to your local collection.
album remove-catalog [catalog-name]	Remove a catalog from your local collection. This will remove all solutions associated with the catalog!
album update	Reload all indices of all catalogs added to your local collection.
album update [catalog-name]	Like update, but only for one specific catalog.
album upgrade	Synchronize the latest state of all your catalogs with the state of your local solution collection.
album upgrade --dry-run	Same as upgrade, but only prints changes and does not apply them to the collection.
album upgrade [catalog-name]	Like upgrade, but only for one specific catalog.

Use solutions	See usage instructions for more details.
album install [solution-identifier]	Install a solution.
album uninstall [solution-identifier]	Uninstall a solution.
album info [solution-identifier]	Print the metadata and usage instructions of a solution.
album run [solution-identifier]	Run a solution.
album test [solution-identifier]	Test if a solution behaves on your system as expected.

Write your own solutions	See solution development guide and catalog development guide for more details.
album clone [catalog-template-name] [parent-dir-of-new-catalog] [name-of-new-catalog]	Creates a new catalog based on any template from here into the provided directory with the provided new name.
album clone [solution-identifier] [parent-dir-of-new-solution] [name-of-new-solution]	Copies a solution into the provided directory with the provided new name.
album deploy [solution-file] [catalog-name]	Deploy a solution into a catalog.
album deploy [solution-file] [catalog-name] --dry-run	Simulate deploying a solution into a catalog.