HEASARC Staff Scientist Position - Applications are now being accepted for a Staff Scientist with significant experience and interest in the technical aspects of astrophysics research, to work in the High Energy Astrophysics Science Archive Research Center (HEASARC) at NASA Goddard Space Flight Center (GSFC) in Greenbelt, MD. Refer to the AAS Job register for full details.

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initpackage

initialize a package of local models

The initpackage command initializes a package of local models from their source code and from a model component description file in model.dat format which defines the component's name, type, function call, and its parameter names and initial settings. Further details of the file format, function and parameter specifications are given in Appendix C.

Syntax: initpackage <name><description file>[<directory>] [-udmget |-udmget64]

The <name> argument names the package. For internal reasons package names must be lowercase: the initpackage command will force lower case and warn the user if the argument contains uppercase letters. Also there should be no numerals in the package name.

The <description file> argument specifies the model component description file. The third argument <directory> is optional and specifies the location of the source code. If it is not given, the value of the setting LOCAL_MODEL_DIRECTORY given in the user's Xspec.init file will be used. Finally, the <description file>, if not specified as an absolute pathname, will be read from the same directory as the source code.

Another optional argument is -udmget, for local model libraries containing Fortran code which makes use of XSPEC's now-obsolete udmget function for dynamic memory allocation. None of the functions in XSPEC's built-in models library use udmget anymore, and the necessary xsudmget.cxx file no longer resides there. If a user still requires this code for their own local models, they should add -udmget at the end of the comamnd line. initpackage will then copy the files xsudmget.cxx and xspec.h into the user's local model directory.

initpackage performs the following tasks:

  • reads the model description file
  • writes code that will load the new component calculation functions
  • writes a makefile that will drive the compilation and installation of the new code
  • invokes the compiler and builds the library.

A separate command, lmod, actually loads the library. This two step process makes it easier to determine where the user is during the process if compilation failures arise. Further, if the model is complete and working correctly, only the lmod command need be invoked.

initpackage can also be run as a stand-alone program outside of XSPEC. When used like this however, after initpackage has finished the user must manually run hmake to build their library. XSPEC performs this part automatically using a script file.

This command is now also supported on Cygwin. The former Cygwin-only static_initpackage command has been removed.

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Last modified: Friday, 23-Aug-2024 13:20:40 EDT

HEASARC Staff Scientist Position - Applications are now being accepted for a Staff Scientist with significant experience and interest in the technical aspects of astrophysics research, to work in the High Energy Astrophysics Science Archive Research Center (HEASARC) at NASA Goddard Space Flight Center (GSFC) in Greenbelt, MD. Refer to the AAS Job register for full details.