BCC2020

→ Abstract


The presenter(s) will be available for live Q&A in this session (both hemispheres).

Philip Ewels

Science for Life Laboratory (SciLifeLab), DBB, Stockholm University, Stockholm, Sweden. Email: phil.ewels@scilifelab.se

Project Website: http://multiqc.info/
Source Code: https://github.com/ewels/MultiQC
License: GNU GPLv3


Main Text of Abstract

MultiQC is a reporting tool that can parse log files from other bioinformatics software, summarising key data in graphs and tables across multiple samples and multiple tools in a single report. It’s designed to run at the end of an analysis pipeline to give an overview of the entire run.

In 2017 I presented MultiQC at BOSC – at the time it was still a relatively new tool and we did a lot of great hacking at the CodeFest afterwards. Since then the number of supported bioinformatics tools has exploded from nearly 40 to nearly 100. The MultiQC community has also grown, with over 100 different people contributing code and hundreds of pull requests being opened.

As part of this growth, the paradigm of tool support has shifted. In the early days I would write nearly all tool modules to add support. As awareness of MultiQC has grown, tool authors are increasingly opting to simply add support for MultiQC instead of writing their own custom reporting tool. The ability to add “custom content” in the form of script outputs has made for a versatile tool that can cope with multiple data types and virtually any project scale.

In this talk I will describe some of the lesser-known core features that have been added to MultiQC in recent years, as well as pointing to some new ideas that are just around the corner. I’ll also cover how the MultiQC community has grown and how I manage the large number of queries and contributions as the sole maintainer.