ARC validation package registry documentation
This documentation covers authoring and publishing validation packages, developing the registry and its client libraries, and operating service releases.
About AVPR
The ARC validation package registry (AVPR) indexes and hosts validation packages for Annotated Research Contexts (ARCs). It has two primary uses:
- Make validation packages discoverable and inspectable for people building Continuous Quality Control (CQC) workflows locally or on the DataHUB.
- Give downstream tools programmatic access to query, verify, and download immutable validation packages through the public API.
Package browser
The deployed package browser lists all published validation packages and shows details including tags, authors, release notes, declared inputs, and validation code. Each package also links to its staged source so contributors can propose changes as a new version.
Package authors
- Submit and version a validation package
- Validation package metadata
- CWL command inputs
- Validation-packages configuration contract
Contributors
Maintainers
API reference
The deployed Swagger UI is the canonical endpoint-level API reference. The website's service release history shows which service version and source revision are currently running.
Resolver and publication clients should use the lightweight
/api/v1/package-index, /api/v1/packages/{name}/versions, and
/api/v1/packages/{name}/{version}/metadata routes. They expose identities and
metadata without transferring executable package content or incrementing
download statistics. The legacy all-content package collection remains
available for compatibility and is deprecated.
Published package versions are immutable. Endpoints that modify registry data therefore require authorization and are not intended for user-facing tools. If you have a valid integration use case that requires an API key, open an issue in the repository issue tracker.
Frequently asked questions
What is an ARC validation package?
A validation package bundles validation cases that an ARC must pass to qualify as valid for that package, together with the instructions needed to run the checks and summarize their results. Validation packages are part of the ARC specification 2.0 draft. Packages hosted by AVPR can be implemented with the ARCExpect reference library.
How can I use a validation package?
Although package scripts can be downloaded from the browser, use
arc-validate to install and run
them locally, or use a CQC pipeline on the DataPLANT DataHUB.
What is Continuous Quality Control?
Continuous Quality Control continuously collects and reports selected quality metrics throughout an ARC's lifecycle. It can cover metadata annotations, exportability to endpoint repositories, and other project-specific checks by repeatedly validating the ARC against selected packages. The PLANTDataHUB paper provides further background.
How can I contribute a validation package?
Submit the package to the repository staging area for review. Once approved, it can be published for others to install. Follow the package-submission workflow for layout, metadata, versioning, and publication requirements. The ARCExpect documentation covers authoring packages with the reference implementation.
How can I validate my ARC locally?
Use arc-validate to manage
validation packages and execute them against a local ARC.