8620: Better onramp in README.md so people visiting Github page for Arvados get

[arvados.git] / README.md

diff --git a/README.md b/README.md
new file mode 100644 (file)
index 0000000..2ba181a
--- /dev/null
+++ b/README.md
@@ -0,0 +1,67 @@
+Welcome to Arvados
+==================
+
+[Arvados](https://arvados.org) is a free software distributed computing platform
+for bioinformatics, data science, and high throughput analysis of massive data
+sets.  Arvados supports a variety of cloud, cluster and HPC environments.
+
+Arvados consists of:
+
+* *Keep*: a petabyte-scale content-addressed distributed storage system for managing and
+  storing collections of files, accessible via HTTP and FUSE mount.
+
+* *Crunch*: a Docker-based workflow engine designed providing strong
+  versioning, reproducibilty, and provenance of computations.
+
+* Related services and components including a web workbench for managing files
+  and compute jobs, REST APIs, SDKs, and other tools.
+
+## Quick start
+
+To try out Arvados quickly, you can use Arvbox, which provides Arvados
+components pre-installed in a Docker container (requires Docker 1.9+).  After
+cloning the Arvados git repository:
+
+```
+$ cd arvados/tools/arvbox/bin
+$ ./arvbox start localdemo
+```
+
+See http://doc.arvados.org/install/arvbox.html for details and documentation.
+
+## Documentation
+
+Complete documentation, including a User Guide, Installation documentation and
+API documentation is available at http://doc.arvados.org/
+
+If you wish to build the Arvados documentation from a local git clone, see
+doc/README.textile for instructions.
+
+## Community
+
+The [#arvados](irc://irc.oftc.net:6667/#arvados IRC) (Internet Relay Chat)
+channel at the
+[Open and Free Technology Community (irc.oftc.net)](http://www.oftc.net/oftc/)
+is available for live discussion and support.  You can use a traditional IRC
+client or [join OFTC over the web.](https://webchat.oftc.net/?channels=arvados)
+
+The
+[Arvados user mailing list](http://lists.arvados.org/mailman/listinfo/arvados)
+is a forum for general discussion, questions, and news about Arvados
+development.  The
+[Arvados developer mailing list](http://lists.arvados.org/mailman/listinfo/arvados-dev)
+is a forum for more technical discussion, intended for developers and
+contributers to Arvados.
+
+## Development
+
+[![Build Status](https://ci.curoverse.com/buildStatus/icon?job=arvados-api-server)](https://ci.curoverse.com/job/arvados-api-server/)
+
+The Arvados public bug tracker is located at https://dev.arvados.org/projects/arvados/issues
+
+Continuous integration is hosted at https://ci.curoverse.com/
+
+## Licensing
+
+Arvados is Free Software.  See COPYING for information about Arvados Free
+Software licenses.