HEAsoft v6.6 Bug List

If you are using HEASOFT v6.5.1 and don't want to upgrade to v6.6 just yet, see the HEASOFT 6.5.x Bug List.

Please visit the HEASOFT Supported Platforms page for current information about supported operating systems and compilers.

Several packages track bugs separately from this page:

• Swift
• CALDB
• fv
• XSPEC
• XRONOS
• XIMAGE

The following is a list of known bugs in v6.6.x of HEAsoft not covered by the above pages.

• extractor (updated 10 Dec 2008):
  
  The HEASARC task extractor has been updated with some bug fixes:

  1. The fall-through option for GTI files of looking in the first table
     extension for the GTI data if none of the extension name matches worked.
  
  2. Speed improvement when writing out spectra with region filtering.
  
  3. Minor tweak to writing of region extensions.  It now uses the EXTNAME
     convention from XMM-Newton i.e. REG001##.  This is still consistent with
     CIAO which depends on the presence of the HDUNAME='REGION' keyword.
  
  4. Temporary fix for problem with making WMAP images when an annular region
     was used and the WMAP and image coordinates are the same. In this case the
     fbbox numbers returned from select_region_setup are incorrect so we ignore
     them and fall back on the method used when the WMAP and image coordinates
     differ.
  
  To apply these updates to your HEASOFT 6.6 source code distribution,
  
  1) Download the extractor v5.08 update tar file
  2) Unpack this tar file on top of your existing heasoft-6.6/ source code tree
  3) cd heasoft-6.6/ftools/heasarc/src/extractor/
  4) hmake
  5) hmake install
  



• FV under Fedora 9:
  
  The FV GUI may fail to start under the Fedora 9 operating system, displaying the error "Application initialization failed: Can't find a usable tk.tcl". One solution is to edit the file

  
    heasoft-6.6/tcltk/tk/generic/tkBind.c
  
  to add these three lines after line 588:
  
    #ifdef GenericEvent
        /* GenericEvent */           0,
    #endif
  
  If you do that and then
  
    cd heasoft-6.6/tcltk/BUILD_DIR/
    ./hmake all-tk
    ./hmake install-tk
  

  the FV GUI should then start up.



• Fedora 7, 8, 9:
  
  We have received reports of mysterious memory errors in some software when using the default 4.x compilers (gcc, g++, gfortran) on the Fedora 7, 8, and 9 Linux operating systems. Currently it looks like switching to alternate compilers - typically installed in /usr/bin/ alongside the 4.x versions as, for example, gcc34, g++34, and g77 - will fix the problem. To use these alternate compilers,

        setenv CC gcc34
        setenv CXX g++34
        setenv FC g77
  

  prior to configuring a HEASOFT source code distribution.
  
  Fedora 7, 8, 9 on x86_64: We have also found that the FTOOLS Fortran dynamic memory allocation routine may be malfunctioning on 64-bit architectures running these recent Fedora operating systems, and we are currently testing a modified version of this routine. If you believe you may have hit this error, please contact us via the FTOOLS help desk.



• Source builds on Mac OS X 10.3.x / Darwin 7.x (PANTHER):
  
  Panther users may hit a build error in the newmakefilter task, stating:

  ComplexData.hh:153: error: `isnan' undeclared (first use this function)
  

  To fix this problem, edit the file
  
  heasoft-6.6/attitude/tasks/newmakefilter/ComplexData.hh
  
  and remove lines 9 and 13, i.e. uncomment the #ifdef __APPLE_CC__ section:

  09: /*
  10: #ifdef __APPLE_CC__
  11: static long isnan(double value) { return __isnand(value); }
  12: #endif
  13: */
  

  This code is only necessary on Panther (and breaks builds with newer versions of the Xcode compilers). After making this edit, the build should hopefully go smoothly.
  
  

Web page maintained by: Bryan K. Irby