SURESOFT- A Framework for Sustainable Research Software Development and Deployment

• Applicants: Professor Dr. Christoph Jacob; Professor Dr.-Ing. Rüdiger Kapitza; Professor Dr.-Ing. Thomas Kürner; Professorin Dr.-Ing. Sabine C. Langer; Dr. Jan Linxweiler; Jan-Marc Pilawa, since 7/2021; Robert Strötgen, since 10/2022
• Subject Area: Acoustics ; Electronic Semiconductors, Components and Circuits, Integrated Systems, Sensor Technology, Theoretical Electrical Engineering ; Solid State and Surface Chemistry, Material Synthesis ; Structural Engineering, Building Informatics and Construction Operation ; Security and Dependability, Operating-, Communication- and Distributed Systems
• Term: since 2020
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 432072763

Research software is of fundamental importance for many disciplines to achieve scientific progress. The software is commonly developed by scientists, with a short-term perspective to gain specific results. Often this leads to software implementations that are hard to extend, maintain and deploy. In fact, as the software gets more and more complex, the attempt to develop new features slows down the scientific process due to the lack of code quality, documentation, and unresolved defects. Such unsustainable development terminates with an unusable research software artifact, inducing the need to reimplement the software. Furthermore, complex deployability may prevent the widespread use in the context of other research projects and teaching. In sum, widespread and long-term usage including archival and reproducibility is inhibited and consequently, the scientific research quality and progress pace are hindered.To address these limitations, the goal of the SURESOFT project is to establish a for all research software projects common usable methodology and infrastructure based on the concepts of continuous integration, as an enabler for improving the quality of research software, easing software delivery and ensuring long-term sustainability and availability. Continuous integration implies and validates changes early on. This is especially useful for agile development environments as is the case with many research projects. SURESOFT will, therefore, devise an integrated approach that is based on the mechanisms of continuous integration – the automated building of software, deployment, and testing. Taking continuous integration as a basis SURESOFT will provide processes and tools to easily deliver the software to interested researchers, e.g. as ready to use software appliance, not only to allow widespread use of the software but also to ship it with the necessary development tools to easily extend it. Moreover, SURESOFT will use the technical basis of continuous integration to enable long-term archival and the reproducibility of results. Archiving only the source code of software misses essential support to build it and omits external dependencies – accordingly, the necessary context has to be archived as well. Also, archived projects have to be revalidated from time to time to ensure that results can still be reproduced, e.g., despite changes in the hardware or software environment.In sum, SURESOFT focuses on application-oriented research and development of e-Research tech- nologies. It covers core aspects of the e-Research Technologies Programme as it designs and develops new technologies, tools and methods to process and safeguard scientifically relevant information. It will empower scientists to efficiently use continuous integration and the associated toolchain that aid deployment, testing and archiving to create sustainable research software. Thereby, the synergies of an integrate approach will be explored.

• DFG Programme: Research data and software (Scientific Library Services and Information Systems)
• Co-Investigator: Professor Dr.-Ing. Manfred Krafczyk
• Ehemalige Antragstellerinnen / Ehemalige Antragsteller: Hendrik Eggers, until 6/2021; Katrin Stump, until 10/2022