[MINC-users] [Announcement] MINC-VM 1.0 Release

[Gabriel A. Devenyi]

Hi all,

After a recent thread on minc-users asking about a VM [1] and the resulting
offer of several options, I thought it might be useful to a have an
up-to-date “standardized” VM with the MINC tools [2].

My goal was to automate the VM production process so that as new versions
of OSes and tools are released it won’t be a huge manual process to
re-create the VM. I found that packer <https://www.packer.io/> is a tool
ideal for spinning up a VM, provisioning it, and exporting it in an
automated manner.

So, this is my announcement of the 1.0 release of MINC-VM, a Lubuntu-Core
16.04 VirtualBox VM, containing:

   - minc-toolkit-v1 <https://github.com/BIC-MNI/minc-toolkit>
   - minc-toolkit-v2 <https://github.com/BIC-MNI/minc-toolkit-v2>
   - pyminc <https://github.com/Mouse-Imaging-Centre/pyminc>
   - minc-stuffs <https://github.com/Mouse-Imaging-Centre/minc-stuffs>
   - R <https://www.r-project.org/>
   - RStudio <https://www.rstudio.com/>
   - RMINC <https://github.com/Mouse-Imaging-Centre/RMINC>
   - brain-view2 <https://github.com/Mouse-Imaging-Centre/brain-view2>
   - pyezminc <https://github.com/BIC-MNI/pyezminc>
   -

   itksnap 3.4.0 with MINC support <https://github.com/vfonov/itksnap3>
   -

   mni.cortical.statistics
   <https://github.com/BIC-MNI/mni.cortical.statistics>

You can find the packer build scripts, download the pre-constructed VM, and
submit issues at:
https://github.com/cobralab/MINC-VM

HashiCorp <https://www.hashicorp.com/> has generously provided a cloud
building and hosting account, so the VM build rebuilds once-a-day to keep
up to date with Ubuntu’s mainline. It also rebuilds when any changes are
pushed on Github. All prior versions are maintained for download as well.

[1] http://www.bic.mni.mcgill.ca/pipermail/minc-users/2016-May/004400.html
[2] https://xkcd.com/927/


--
Gabriel A. Devenyi B.Eng. Ph.D.
Research Computing Associate
Computational Brain Anatomy Laboratory
Cerebral Imaging Center
Douglas Mental Health University Institute
Affiliate, Department of Psychiatry
McGill University
t: 514.761.6131x4781
e: gdevenyi at gmail.com