wft4galaxy: a workflow testing tool for galaxy

MOTIVATION: Workflow managers for scientific analysis provide a high-level programming platform facilitating standardization, automation, collaboration and access to sophisticated computing resources. The Galaxy workflow manager provides a prime example of this type of platform. As compositions of simpler tools, workflows effectively comprise specialized computer programs implementing often very complex analysis procedures. To date, no simple way to automatically test Galaxy workflows and ensure their correctness has appeared in the literature. RESULTS: With wft4galaxy we offer a tool to bring automated testing to Galaxy workflows, making it feasible to bring continuous integration to their development and ensuring that defects are detected promptly. wft4galaxy can be easily installed as a regular Python program or launched directly as a Docker container—the latter reducing installation effort to a minimum. AVAILABILITY AND IMPLEMENTATION: Available at https://github.com/phnmnl/wft4galaxy under the Academic Free License v3.0.