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Installing HEASoft - Ubuntu (or Debian-based) Linux

  • SOURCE CODE INSTALLATION (Recommended):
    • Installations from the source code are recommended over the pre-compiled binaries due to the lack of portability of pre-compiled Perl libraries and other portability issues on Linux with the pre-compiled binaries. Note also that source code builds are required for users who wish to load local models in Xspec or use the Xspec Python interface (PyXspec).

    • Prerequisite packages:

      After installing the Ubuntu (or Debian-based) Linux OS on your machine, you will need to install (using the "apt-get" package manager) a few other packages which are needed in order to build HEASoft from the source code distribution: 
          sudo apt-get -y install libreadline6-dev
    sudo apt-get -y install libncurses5-dev
    sudo apt-get -y install xorg-dev
    sudo apt-get -y install gcc g++ gfortran
    sudo apt-get -y install perl-modules
    sudo apt-get -y install python-dev
    • Building the software:

      After installing the above packages and checking that /usr/bin is ahead of other bin directories in your PATH environment variable, most users should just follow the basic GNU-like build procedure outlined in the HEASoft installation guide, i.e.: 
          % cd heasoft-6.16/BUILD_DIR/
    % ./configure
    % make
    % make install
      Note that it is a good idea to capture the output from these steps in the manner appropriate for your shell, for example: 
           In C-shell variants (tcsh/csh):      In Bourne Shell variants (bash/sh):
  
         ./configure >& config.out &        ./configure > config.out 2>&1 &
     and
         make >& build.log &                make > build.log 2>&1 &
     etc.
      Note that you should let each step finish before proceeding to the next. The installation guide contains descriptions of optional configuration flags that more advanced users may wish to utilize.

    • Initialization:

      To initialize the software, do the following: 
         For users of C Shell variants (csh, tcsh):

    setenv HEADAS /path/to/your/installed/heasoft-6.16/(PLATFORM)
    source $HEADAS/headas-init.csh

   For users of Bourne Shell (sh, ash, ksh, and bash):

    export HEADAS=/path/to/your/installed/heasoft-6.16/(PLATFORM)
    . $HEADAS/headas-init.sh
      In the examples above, (PLATFORM) is a placeholder for the platform- specific string denoting your machine's architecture, for example: 
            i686-pc-linux-gnu-libc2.12
      x86_64-unknown-linux-gnu-libc2.12


  • PRE-COMPILED BINARY INSTALLATION (Not Recommended):
    • Installations of the pre-compiled binaries are not recommended due to the lack of portability of pre-compiled Perl libraries and other Linux portability issues. Note that installations from the source code distribution are required for users who wish to load local models in Xspec or use the Xspec Python interface (PyXspec).

    • Prerequisite packages:

      After installing Ubuntu Linux on your machine, you will need to install (using the "apt-get" package manager) a few other packages are needed in order to build HEASoft from the source code distribution: 
          sudo apt-get -y install libncurses5-dev
    sudo apt-get -y install xorg-dev
    • Configuring the software:

      After installing the above packages, most users should just follow the basic binary installation procedure outlined in the HEASoft installation guide, i.e.: 
          % cd heasoft-6.16/(PLATFORM)/BUILD_DIR/
    % ./configure
      If the configure script yields a message about a "Perl mismatch", you will either need to install HEASoft from the source code distribution, or install a version of Perl which matches that listed for your platform in our Perl reference.

    • Initialization:

      To initialize the software, do the following: 
         For users of C Shell variants (csh, tcsh):

    setenv HEADAS /path/to/your/installed/heasoft-6.16/(PLATFORM)
    source $HEADAS/headas-init.csh

   For users of Bourne Shell (sh, ash, ksh, and bash):

    export HEADAS=/path/to/your/installed/heasoft-6.16/(PLATFORM)
    . $HEADAS/headas-init.sh
      In the examples above, (PLATFORM) is a placeholder for the platform- specific string denoting your machine's architecture, for example: 
            i686-pc-linux-gnu-libc2.5
      x86_64-unknown-linux-gnu-libc2.5


    • Help lines: FTOOLS or xanprob@athena.gsfc.nasa.gov

    Web page maintained by Bryan K. Irby


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    Last modified: Wednesday, 02-Jul-2014 17:40:42 EDT