BiocCommits: Bioconductor centric hackathons
Bioconductor is a mature, diverse, and well-maintained project that performs and facilitates research across a variety of medical and natural science fields. One of the strengths of the project over its history has been the Bioconductor community. These hackathon events are intended to bring that community together to tackle project-wide problems and opportunities, from simple bug fixes to maintenance of core packages, to construction and publication of new packages or workflows.
Who can contribute
Participation is open to anyone with experience with Bioconductor software. Though many projects may be deeply technical, the most important qualities needed for participation are a willingness to learn and a commitment to being a good team player. New or early career contributors to Bioconductor are encouraged to participate in person or virtually.
How to contribute
For BiocCommits events attached to conferences, in-person participation is encouraged, but not required. Virtual contributions are welcomed. Most contributions, particularly those to R packages will be expected to be R centric in terms of code actually written. However, some projects focusing on code infrastructure may require fluency in C, Fortran, or other lower level languages. Also, projects focusing on workflows or other themes may require fluency in bash, Docker, specific workflow languages, or 4GLs besides R.
Bioconductor is a diverse and complex project with many ways to contribute.
Project types
BiocCommits events will feature a small array of proposed or solicited project ideas, but participants are welcome to bring their own as long as they’ve been discussed with event organisers beforehand. Generally projects will fall into, but are not limited to, one of three general categories.
Micro Contributions
General bug fixes and feature additions. These are contributions that can be bottled up into a single or a few github pull requests. If you’ve encountered a bug, aberrant behavior, or lack of a useful feature in a core or popular package that is accepting pull requests, these events can provide expertise or guidance for submitting those fixes or feature additions. These can be a great way for new contributors to learn about the internals of Bioconductor and R, good software development practices, version control and management, and team coding environments. Tangible outcomes from these contributions may be (but are not strictly) limited to tracked github activity.
General Contributions
Package or workflow sized team projects. Complete a full and complex package or workflow across the entire event. These contributions will be great for ideas that require diverse scientific or technical backgrounds.
Major Contributions
Complex and thoughtful contributions to existing or planned Bioconductor or R infrastructure. These will typically require considerable fluency with Bioconductor and R internals, C/C++, and good software development practices.
Expected outcomes
There will be an emphasis on generating tangible and public work products from BiocCommits events. Functional and tested R packages and general workflows are ideal, though not required. Participants should be able to point to a professional and accessible github repository at the end of the event that can lead to further projects or collaborations, and serve as a clear resume line representing a work product.
Project scope and goals will be discussed at the beginning of the event.
Planned BiocCommit events
The first BioCommits event is currently planned to take place before EuroBioc2026 in Turku, Finland.
Products and Projects from previous BiocCommits events
Coming soon!