Why would one start a blog in 2024? Isn’t that about 10 years too late? Well, yeah…
There is more than one way to keep in touch with the development of the community and the ecosystem of interoperable tools for distributed data management that the DataLad software is a part of. Joey’s git-annex dev blog has been around for a decade at this point. The DataLad handbook was first released five years ago. It is not only an introduction to DataLad, but contains more than a few contributed examples of using git-annex, DataLad and other tools in unison to solve data challenges, mostly focused on research. We posted bits on social media since the beginning. First on the platform that is no longer, and more recently on Mastodon. And this year, we finally had a proper community meet-up at Distribits in Düsseldorf.
So why a(nother) blog now?
DataLad has matured and its community has diversified. Instead of one software package, there are now many. Watching any single repo gives a very limited idea of the overall progress made. Social media does not allow for the depth often needed to explain and demo things properly. The handbook is both too voluminous and too research focused, to be a good place to put everything worth showcasing. And the talks at Distribits have proven that there is a lot of amazing stuff that people do with DataLad.
So why not?
This blog aims to be a place to share thoughts and facts in the realm of distributed data and DataLad. Short or long pieces on new developments, custom solutions to large or small challenges, or opinions about the way things ought to be, or not. And as with all the other aspects about DataLad, it is open for contributions. The blog website is generated from a DataLad dataset with Hugo. If you are interested in contributing a post, drop us a note.