Installation of the firehose pipeline is a multi-step process. It has been tested on the Mac OSX platform (Leopard and Snow Leopard) and also some Linux implementations. We believe that it is stable in these configurations, but some users have reported difficulties installing aspects of the xidl dependency tree. Users are encouraged to examine (and update if appropriate!) the world-editable bugs wiki for tips on how to improve installation of xidl for use with FIRE.
System Requirements
- Unix installation and license for IDL. Preferably v6.0 or higher.
Installation Procedure
NEW!
The xidl distribution is now available via anonymous svn, and several of the fixes outlined below for xidl are now included in its repository. So, new users are advised to download in this manner rather than via the tarball.
- Download and install the XIDL package of subroutines, provided by J.X. Prochaska. Documentation on installation procedures is provided on the linked website. XIDL is now distributed via anonymous SVN. The XIDL package depends in turn on the SDSS idlspec2d and idlutils packages, so you'll need to install those as well. Note that the instructions on the princeton website about installation are helpful but very out of date. It is probably advisable to get the idlspec2d code from the svn repository at sdss3.org rather than the Princeton tarball. If you are having trouble installing xidl, especially compiling the externally linked libraries with "evilmake," please refer to the BUGS page on this wiki for help on different operating systems.
- There are 3 minor changes you'll need to make to xidl, to add FIRE as an instrument and also to plug a known memory leak. Please refer to this page for detailed instructions. (The previous sentences are obsolete for users obtaining xidl via svn)
- Download the latest release of the firehose code base via anonymous svn as described here. This usually goes into the directory pointed to by the environment variable $IDL_LOCAL.
- Set a new environment variable $FIRE_DIR in your shell (e.g. via a .cshrc or similar configuration file) to point to the directory where you unpacked the FIREHOSE code.
- Start up an idl session. At the command prompt, type " which, 'x_specplot' ". If IDL returns the path of this procedure properly, your xidl environment variables are set up correctly.
- From the IDL command prompt, type "firehose." This should bring up a GUI used for the reduction procedure and indicates that your paths are set up correctly.
Summary of Installation Commands
| Code Block |
|---|
unix> cd $IDL_LOCAL unix> svn export http://www.sdss3.org/svn/repo/idlutils/tags/v5_4_20 idlutils [Downloads idlutils] unix> svn export http://www.sdss3.org/svn/repo/idlspec2d/tags/v5_4_30 idlspec2d [Downloads idlspec2d] [Follow instructions on SDSS3 website for compiling idlutils and idlspec2d] [NOTE: some FIRE users have reported problems compiling idlutils on 64 bit machines. See the top post of the known bugs thread for a workaround] unix> svn co https://svn.ucolick.org/xidl/trunk xidl [NOTE: Downloads xidl] unix> svn co svn://pele.mit.edu//FIRE FIRE [Downloads FIRE] unix> setenv FIRE_DIR $IDL_LOCAL/FIREHOSE/ [NOTE: this should probably be put in your .cshrc or .bashrc file] unix> idl |
| Code Block |
|---|
IDL> which, "x_specplot" % Compiled module: WHICH. % Compiled module: STRSPLIT. Module X_SPECPLOT Not Compiled. Other Files Containing Module X_SPECPLOT in IDL !path: /Users/Rob/idl/........./x_specplot.pro IDL> firehose |
<GUI appears if installed correctly>