CAPTdepends

CAPTdepends is a software toolkit that provides dependency analysis for CAPT pipelines. It collects information about data artifacts, computational tasks, and resources across a CAPT project, and it constructs a directed graph representing data and control dependencies. The toolkit is designed to complement the CAPT framework, a modular system for assembling computational workflows in research and industry, by offering explicit provenance and scheduling insights that span the entire pipeline.

Its core functionality includes static analysis of pipeline configurations to infer dependencies, dynamic monitoring to detect runtime dependencies, and provenance recording that captures how results are produced. CAPTdepends can generate visualizations of the dependency graph and export graphs in formats such as Graphviz or JSON. It integrates with common workflow engines like Nextflow, Snakemake, and CWL, facilitating cross-tool interoperability. A built-in rules engine helps identify cycles, redundant steps, bottlenecks, and opportunities for parallelization.

Technically, CAPTdepends is implemented as a Python library with a modular core and a plug-in architecture. It reads CAPT configuration files and standard manifest data, and can operate in standalone mode or as part of a CAPT-driven pipeline. The design emphasizes lightweight integration, incremental updates, and scalability to large projects.

Since its initial release in 2020, CAPTdepends has been used in computational biology, climate modeling, and engineering simulations to improve reproducibility and planning of computational work. Limitations include a reliance on well-formed CAPT configurations, potential memory overhead for very large graphs, and challenges in fully capturing dynamic dependencies that depend on external factors or heterogeneous environments.

See also CAPT, data provenance, workflow management systems.