Welcome to mqrun’s documentation!¶
MaxQuant is a quantitative proteomics software package that unfortunatly only runs on Windows and is designed for use with a graphical user interface. Both make it hard to integrate into a larger workflow.
mqrun consists of four parts, that try to mitigate those problems:
- mqrun.mqparams
- This is a small library that converts user supplied json-parameter files into the rather peculiar configuration files of MaxQuant and supplies a small helper function that calles the MaxQuant executable with this configuration. The format of the parameter file is documented in Parameter file format. Since the format of the MaxQuant configuration file keeps changing, mqparams supports one version of MaxQuant only.
- mqrun.fscall
- fscall is a library that handles requests to another machine, where the filesystem is the only communication channel. It provides status messages, simple error handling, access to logfiles and a heartbeat that tells the client that the server is still working on a request.
- mqrun.mqdaemon
- mqdaemon uses fscall to provide a server that can run on a Windows machine and handles requests for MaxQuant. It includes basic load balancing. See mqdaemon -h for options.
- mqrun.mqclient
mqclient is a small client library that wraps the fscall routines to provide a convenient interface for programs running on linux (or windows) machines, that want to run MaxQuant.
If configured correctly it can also start a virtual machine running Windows and use that to run MaxQuant without the need for a dedicated Windows machine.