Prerequisites

You don’t need the bp-submission-pipeline to submit to BigPicture. If you are comfortable on the command line, you can prepare and upload a dataset yourself with the sda-cli direct path described in this section. Some of these tools are also used inside the bp-submission-pipeline, so this path stays close to what happens under the hood there.

Note

This section assumes a more technical, command-line-comfortable reader than the Implementation (A–J) operator manual. If you’d rather run an automated, guided flow, use that manual instead.

This page installs the two tools the direct path needs. Use at least the minimum version listed — older versions are missing commands this guide relies on.

Tool	Minimum version	Purpose
sda-cli	v0.2.1	Encrypt files and upload them to your BigPicture inbox
bigpicture-metadata-interface	v2.0.2	Generate and manage the dataset metadata XML (private repository)

Note

Uploads go through sda-cli, which speaks S3 to the BigPicture inbox itself. You do not need to install s3cmd — the s3cmd-inbox.conf file you download from the portal is just the credentials file sda-cli reads, not a sign that the s3cmd tool is required.

sda-cli

Download the release that matches your operating system from the sda-cli releases page, then extract the binary. The executable ends up in the same directory as the downloaded archive.

Windows

Download the ..._Windows_x86_64.zip asset, then extract it:

Expand-Archive sda-cli_vX_Windows_x86_64.zip -DestinationPath .

macOS

Download the ..._Darwin_x86_64.tar.gz asset, then extract it:

tar -xvzf sda-cli_vX_Darwin_x86_64.tar.gz

Linux

Download the ..._Linux_x86_64.tar.gz asset, then extract it:

tar -xvzf sda-cli_vX_Linux_x86_64.tar.gz

Verify

Run the binary’s built-in help to confirm it executes:

Windows

sda-cli help

macOS

./sda-cli help

Linux

./sda-cli help

You should see the usage text listing the encrypt and upload commands. Check that you downloaded v0.2.1 or later from the releases page.

Note

Full sda-cli user documentation lives in its GitHub repository. This guide includes everything needed to encrypt and upload to BigPicture.

bigpicture-metadata-interface

This tool is distributed through a private Git repository, so you must have been granted access before you can install it. Once you have access, install v2.0.2 or later following the instructions in the repository’s own README.

Important

If you cannot reach the repository, you do not yet have access. Request it the same way you request access to the other private BigPicture resources — see Support.

Once both tools are installed, continue to Prepare data.