Multi user installation on offline environment

[dunatotatos]

Multi user installation of nextflow is easy (simply make sure the binary is in a standard location, like /usr/local/bin, or on your software stack).

Offline installation for a single user is well described in many places (copy the binary and $HOME/.nextflow to the offline system).

Multi user installation on an offline system seems to work with -all package, but this option is sub-optimal. It is not possible to install non-core plugins, and #4330 seems to indicate that -all might even disappear.

I've tried setting NXF_HOME to a shared folder, but as indicated in this thread, it is a bad idea. I then looked for a way to share only relevant folders (mostly capsule and framework), but not tmp, and cache, but could not find how to.

Is there a recommended (or even just working) way to install Nextflow with support of non-core plugins for multiple users in an offline environment?

[mattdton]

Better support for this use case would be really useful. If you copy the capsule and framework directories into ${APP_PATH}, setting

CAPSULE_CACHE_DIR=${APP_PATH}/capsule
NXF_DIST=${APP_PATH}/framework

seems to work but it would be good to know how fragile this is.

[bentsherman]

Since 24.07.0-edge, the "all" release was replaced with a "dist" release which supports the use of third-party plugins. Hope this helps