CoCalc

Collaborative Calculation in the Cloud

CoCalc offers collaborative calculation in the cloud. This includes working with the full (scientific) Python stack, SageMath, Julia, R, Octave, and more. It also offers capabilities to author documents in LaTeX, R/knitr or Markdown, storing and organizing files, a web-based Linux Terminal, communication tools like a chat, course management and more.

Website

• CoCalc -- the online service
• Github
• Mailing List

Very easy install of CoCalc on your computer

You can easily use CoCalc on your own computer for free by running a Docker image.

History

CoCalc was formerly called SageMathCloud. It started to offer way more than just SageMath and hence outgrew itself. The name was coined in fall 2016 and changed around spring 2017.

Contributors

Current highly active contributors

• John Jeng
• Harald Schilly
• Hal Snyder
• William Stein

Past contributors

• Greg Bard
• Rob Beezer
• Keith Clawson
• Tim Clemans
• Andy Huchala
• Jon Lee
• Simon Luu
• Nicholas Ruhland
• Todd Zimmerman

... and many others: See https://github.com/sagemathinc/cocalc/graphs/contributors

Copyright/License

The copyright of CoCalc is owned by SageMath, Inc., and the source code here is released under the GNU Affero General Public License version 3+. See the included file LICENSE.md.

None of the frontend or server dependencies of SMC are themselves GPL licensed; they all have non-viral liberal licenses. If want to host your own SMC at a company, and need a different AGPL-free license, please contact help@sagemath.com.

Trademark

"CoCalc" is a registered trademark.

ARCHITECTURE

• Client -- javascript client library that runs in web browser
• Load balancer/ssl -- HAproxy
• Database -- PostgreSQL
• Compute -- VM's running TCP servers (e.g., sage, console, projects, python3, R, etc.)
• Hub -- written in Node.js; primus server; connects with everything -- compute servers, database, other hubs, and clients.
• Storage -- Snapshots of project data
• HTTP server -- Nginx

Architectural Diagram

   Client    Client    Client   Client  ...
     /|\
      |
   https://cocalc.com (primus)
      |
      |
     \|/
 HAproxy (load balancing...)HAproxy                  Admin     (monitor and control system)
 /|\       /|\      /|\      /|\
  |         |        |        |
  |http1.1  |        |        |
  |         |        |        |
 \|/       \|/      \|/      \|/
 Hub<----> Hub<---->Hub<---> Hub  <-----------> PostgreSQL <--> PostgreSQL  <--> PostgreSQL ...
           /|\      /|\      /|\
            |        |        |
   ---------|        |        | (tcp)
   |                 |        |
   |                 |        |
  \|/               \|/      \|/
 Compute<-------->Compute<-->Compute <--- rsync replication  to Storage Server, which has ZFS snapshots

Acknowledgements

Browserstack

We are grateful to BrowserStack for providing infrastructure to test CoCalc.

Development

Prerequisites

• node
• Postgres
• pip install pyyaml

Installation

The following instruction don't install SMC. They're for development purposes only!

• git clone https://github.com/sagemathinc/cocalc -- copy repo
• cd cocalc/src
• npm run install-all -- build
• npm test -- run test suite (expected failures if your clock is not UTC)
• install.py all --compute --web -- build and install some parts system-wide for development use
• See INSTALL.md for more details.

For further options please go here.