Kev Posted December 13, 2020 Report Posted December 13, 2020 arXivist is a command line interface allowing for the management of pre-print research papers and other publications from repositories such as arXiv on a local machine. Motivation Most search engines for research papers I am aware of are GUI based, accessed only via a web browser. As far as I am aware, an equivalent utility for terminal environments does not exist - this project aims to fill that gap. The goal is to provide a comparatively powerful, accessible, and easy to use search tool for finding, storing, and tagging research papers from pre-publication repositories, all from the comfort of the command line on one's own computer. Installation & Set Up Pre-Requisites arXivist requires the installation of the following: Command line interface which can run Bash scripts Git to clone the repo Docker Docker-Compose This program was developed on Ubuntu, so other Linux distros or Mac systems shouldn't have any issues setting it up. Windows users will likely need to install the Windows Subsystem for Linux. and follow some additional steps to get it setup.e It is recommended trying some of the sample Docker and Docker-Compose examples to ensure the programs are configured correctly Non-Root Access After installing Docker and Docker-Compose, ensure they can be run without root access The start up script assumes non-root access to Docker and Docker-Compose. Manual Configuration Make sure the permissions on start.sh are set to be executable by the current user. Something like chmod 774 start.sh should suffice. Under .env, ensure the PROGRAM_MODE is set to prod and not dev. Also under .env, change HOST_SAVE_DIRC to a directory where you would like download materials to be saved. Aimed at ~/Downloads by default. Don't touch any other variable under .env! Start Up! To start the program for the first time, simply run start.sh build to set up the Docker environment and enter the program! This may take a moment to build. After being build for the first time, any subsequent attempts to enter the program can be done with start.sh! If the underlying Docker containers are removed or one fails to enter the program again, simply try rebuilding with start.sh build again! Updating In updating the program, it is assumed the program was installed with git - with a link to the remote Github repo under the default origin name. In addition, that the local master branch has an upstream connection to the remote master branch. So to check for any updates directly from GitHub - run start.sh update. This will automatically pull down any updates on the remote master branch and rebuild the Docker environment. Setting Up Shortcuts After setting up the program for the first time, it is recommended adding the following custom commands to one's Bash profile for ease of use. {PATH_TO_PROJECT} is the path to the directory where this project lives. alias arxivist={PATH_TO_PROJECT}/start.sh alias arxivist-build='{PATH_TO_PROJECT}/start.sh build' alias arxivist-update='{PATH_TO_PROJECT}/start.sh update' Now you should be able to enter arxivist right into a new command line and enter the program! Usage How to use the application and what each command does should be very straightforwards from simply using the program. Command names are meant to be self explanatory with help commands also giving more detailed explanations. Either way, a basic structure of the modes and commands making up the application are as follows: search mode search for new materials to download view mode search for previously downloaded materials to modify them suggest mode suggest papers based off of previously downloaded materials Accreditations Special thanks to the team managing and hosting arXiv and the arXiv API, which this project would be nothing without. Category winner from HackWitUs 2019. Planned Future Milestones Better download setup? Mass download / upload for previously downloaded papers. View downloaded materials from within container Integration with other pre-print sites such as bioRxiv Fully separate out IO logic from input & print statements Download: arXivist-master.zip or git clone https://github.com/njhofmann/arXivist.git Source Quote
