BUILDING AND INSTALLING ASCEND Thanks for downloading ASCEND! We hope you'll find it straight- forward to set up and run ASCEND. If you have any comments on your experience with this, we're very keen to hear about that. Please check out the up-to-date contact details at: https://ascendserver.cheme.cmu.edu/wiki/ There are older versions of this document, which include instructions on how to build ASCEND with GNU Autotools. This may or may not work with the version you are currently looking at. https://ascendserver.cheme.cmu.edu/svn/ascend/code/branches/extfn/INSTALL.txt?view=log ----- BUILDING ON LINUX AND WINDOWS To build ASCEND we now recommend using SCons. This is supported both on Windows (using the MinGW toolset) and Linux. Build scripts for using jam and GNU Autotools are also provided although these scripts will not allow you access to the full range of ASCEND functionality. The Autotools scripts will only build the tcl/tk interface version. ASCEND provides two possible interfaces. The older, more mature GUI is based on Tcl/Tk. A newer interface that is more in keeping with modern GUI design is implemented using PyGTK, but it is still missing some functionality and actively being developed. Using SCons 0.96.92 or newer, see your build options by typing scons -Qh You can add your build options to a file in this directory which you can create, called 'config.py'. Otherwise you can specify your build options via the commandline. By default they will be recorded in the file 'options.cache', so watch out for that if scons seems to not be doing what you expected. Then to build ASCEND, type scons SCons will tell you what version(s) of ASCEND it is able to build, and then proceed to start the build. The PyGTK interface requires Python (which is already present if you have SCons!). The Tcl/Tk interface requires that you have Tcl/Tk and TkTable installed on your system. For updates on this information, and PLATFORM-SPECIFIC INFORMATION, please check http://ascendserver.cheme.cmu.edu/wiki/index.php/BuildingAscend For specific information on building the Python interface and setting up the PyGTK GUI, please see http://ascendserver.cheme.cmu.edu/wiki/index.php/PythonWrapper ------ BUILDING ON SOLARIS Some work has been done on building on Solaris, using Python 2.3. At present it's pretty close but not yet stable. If you can help out, let us know. ------ RUNNING FOR THE FIRST TIME If you've build ASCEND from source, you don't need to 'install' it before you can run it. The main issue with running from the source directories is that you need to set various environment variables: ASCENDLIBRARY Location of the 'models' directory, eg ~/src/ascend-NNN/models LD_LIBRARY_PATH Must contain the paths to the ascend shared libraries, in particular libascend.so, or for the Tcl/Tk interface, also libascendtcl.so. It can often be easier to simply install in your home directory as shown below. ------ ISSUES WITH THE TCL/TK INTERFACE It can sometimes be a bit challenging to build the Tcl/Tk interface. ASCEND can run with Tcl/Tk version 8.4 but it is more stable when using Tcl/Tk version 8.3. A suggested approach in this case is to download and install the 'ActiveTcl' distribution, version 8.3.5, and to install it in ~/activetcl. http://downloads.activestate.com/ActiveTcl/Windows/8.3.5/ Then, you should be able to build the Tcl/Tk interface as shown: export LD_LIBRARY_PATH=~/activetcl/lib:~/activetcl/lib/Tktable2.8 scons TCL=~/activetcl See also the TCL_LIB and TK_LIB flags (scons -Qh). ------ INSTALLING ON LINUX To then install ASCEND, you will need to have write access to the directories INSTALL_* as specified in your SCons configuration. You can then type: scons install The simplest way to install ASCEND 'off-root' is something like: scons INSTALL_PREFIX=~/ascroot Note that if you install (or run) ASCEND off-root, you need to ensure that Linux can access the shared libraries. For example, in the above case, you would need to add export LD_LIBRARY_PATH=$LD_LIBRARY_PATH:~/ascroot/lib ------ INSTALLING ON WINDOWS To build a Windows installer (a 'setup.exe') for the PyGTK GUI, you will need to have the NSIS installer-creator installed on your system (which is free, at http://nsis.sf.net/). Then you should simply need to type scons installer This will leave an installer package named 'ascend-NNNNN.exe' in the pygtk/interface directory, with NNNNN being the version number specified at the top of the SConstruct file. ------ A NOTE ABOUT PREFERENCES ASCEND PyGTK GUI stores your preferences in the file ~/.ascend.ini. The Tcl/Tk GUI creates a file under ~/ascdata. You may wish to check these files if ASCEND seems to be doing something you didn't expect. ------ CREATING AN RPM/DEB PACKAGE Many users prefer to keep their systems clear of unpackaged software. For this reason, we aim to provide the ability to build ASCEND as an RPM package. There is a "SPEC" file included in the source tree. If you have a source package, such as for example ascend-NNNNN.tar.bz2, place it in your home directory, then type the following rpmbuild -ta ascend-NNNNN.tar.bz2 This will pull out the 'spec' from from the source package, which hopefully will be up to date in correspondance with the package version number NNNNN. You will then be able to install ASCEND using something like rpm -i ~/rpm/ascend-NNNNN-0.jdpipe.i386.rpm Debian/Unbuntu users should find that they can create a usable .deb package using the tool 'alien'. We haven't got native support for the generation of .deb packages at this stage. NOTE: occasionally the 'ascend.spec' file may need to be updated if changes have been made to the 'ascend.spec.in' file. Check the implementation details in the SConstruct file. ------ GETTING SUPPORT AND FURTHER INFORMATION For support with ASCEND, details of mailing lists and other useful information, please visit ASCEND user's website: http://ascend.cheme.cmu.edu/ ASCEND developer's wiki: https://ascendserver.cheme.cmu.edu/wiki/