reftrace.com

What It Is

RefTrace is a developer tool for linting Nextflow pipelines. Its core idea is not to have users scan .nf files with regular expressions, but to parse the Nextflow DSL and expose the results as Python objects. Users can write rules with the @rule decorator in rules.py, then run checks from the pipeline root directory via reftrace lint.

Core Capabilities

Based on the captured text, RefTrace mainly focuses on Nextflow modules, processes, and directives. It parses each module and returns the list of processes within it; it currently explicitly states that it “does not care about channels or workflows.” The Python API exposes core classes such as Module, Process, and ConfigFile, and provides detailed support for many process directives, including label, container, cpus, memory, executor, conda, publishDir, time, and errorStrategy. It also provides config file–related structures such as ProcessScope, NamedScope, Directive, NamedOption, and Value.

Pricing and Deployment

The text does not provide any pricing, paid plan, or commercial support information. Installation is done via pip install reftrace, and it explicitly states that it “works completely offline and collects no data.” As such, it appears to be more of a local CLI/Python package that can run on a local machine or in a CI environment, though the documentation does not describe an official CI integration method.

Pros and Cons

Its strengths are its clear positioning: it is built for Nextflow compliance checks, rules are written in Python, and it is more maintainable than regex-based approaches. It works fully offline and collects no data, making it suitable for scientific computing and restricted environments. Its API breaks directives down in fairly fine detail, which makes it suitable for writing organization-level rules. Its limitations are also clear: it currently does not handle channels/workflows; the examples show that users need to implement rules themselves, with no obvious built-in rule library; and there is limited information about licensing, open-source status, roadmap, community activity, and commercial support.

Who It’s For

RefTrace is suitable for bioinformatics teams maintaining Nextflow or nf-core-style pipelines, research platform engineers, and organizations that need to enforce standards around process labels, resource configuration, containers, executors, and similar items. For users who want a large set of built-in lint rules out of the box, the current information suggests that a fair amount of custom development may be required.

Access in China

The captured text does not provide information about availability from mainland China. Since it is primarily distributed through pip/GitHub, actual access may depend on connectivity to PyPI, GitHub, and the project site, so this is assessed as unknown.