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Contents of /trunk/INSTALL.txt

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Revision 1435 - (show annotations) (download)
Sun May 20 16:58:44 2007 UTC (17 years, 4 months ago) by ballan
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updated the makefile stuff to work in the current dir structure.
still lots of problems with the install target and now doing
the evil double link because the directories
system, linear, and solver really are NOT independent.
1 BUILDING AND INSTALLING ASCEND
2
3 Thanks for downloading ASCEND! We hope you'll find it straight-
4 forward to set up and run ASCEND. If you have any comments on
5 your experience with this, we're very keen to hear about that.
6 Please check out the up-to-date contact details at:
7 https://ascendserver.cheme.cmu.edu/wiki/
8
9 There are older versions of this document, which include instructions
10 on how to build ASCEND with GNU Autotools. This may or may not work
11 with the version you are currently looking at.
12 https://ascendserver.cheme.cmu.edu/svn/ascend/code/branches/extfn/INSTALL.txt?view=log
13
14 -----
15 BUILDING ON LINUX AND WINDOWS
16
17 To build ASCEND we now recommend using SCons. This is supported
18 both on Windows (using the MinGW toolset) and Linux. Build scripts for using
19 jam and GNU Autotools are also provided although these scripts will not allow
20 you access to the full range of ASCEND functionality. The Autotools
21 scripts will only build the tcl/tk interface version.
22
23 ASCEND provides two possible interfaces. The older, more mature
24 GUI is based on Tcl/Tk. A newer interface that is more in keeping
25 with modern GUI design is implemented using PyGTK, but it is still
26 missing some functionality and actively being developed.
27
28 Using SCons 0.96.92 or newer, see your build options by typing
29
30 scons -Qh
31
32 You can add your build options to a file in this directory
33 which you can create, called 'config.py'. Otherwise you can
34 specify your build options via the commandline. By default they will
35 be recorded in the file 'options.cache', so watch out for that if scons
36 seems to not be doing what you expected.
37
38 Then to build ASCEND, type
39
40 scons
41
42 SCons will tell you what version(s) of ASCEND it is able to build, and then
43 proceed to start the build. The PyGTK interface requires Python (which is
44 already present if you have SCons!). The Tcl/Tk interface requires that you
45 have Tcl/Tk and TkTable installed on your system.
46
47 For updates on this information, and PLATFORM-SPECIFIC INFORMATION, please check
48 http://ascendserver.cheme.cmu.edu/wiki/index.php/BuildingAscend
49
50 For specific information on building the Python interface and
51 setting up the PyGTK GUI, please see
52 http://ascendserver.cheme.cmu.edu/wiki/index.php/PythonWrapper
53
54 ------
55 BUILDING ON SOLARIS
56
57 Some work has been done on building on Solaris, using Python 2.3. At present
58 it's pretty close but not yet stable. If you can help out, let us know.
59
60 ------
61 RUNNING FOR THE FIRST TIME
62
63 If you've build ASCEND from source, you don't need to 'install'
64 it before you can run it. The main issue with running from the
65 source directories is that you need to set various environment
66 variables:
67
68 ASCENDLIBRARY
69 Location of the 'models' directory, eg ~/src/ascend-NNN/models
70
71 LD_LIBRARY_PATH
72 Must contain the paths to the ascend shared libraries, in
73 particular libascend.so, or for the Tcl/Tk interface, also
74 libascendtcl.so.
75
76 It can often be easier to simply install in your home directory
77 as shown below.
78
79 ------
80 ISSUES WITH THE TCL/TK INTERFACE
81
82 It can sometimes be a bit challenging to build the Tcl/Tk
83 interface. ASCEND can run with Tcl/Tk version 8.4 but it is more stable when
84 using Tcl/Tk version 8.3.
85
86 A suggested approach in this case is to download and install the 'ActiveTcl'
87 distribution, version 8.3.5, and to install it in ~/activetcl.
88 http://downloads.activestate.com/ActiveTcl/Windows/8.3.5/
89
90 Then, you should be able to build the Tcl/Tk interface as shown:
91
92 export LD_LIBRARY_PATH=~/activetcl/lib:~/activetcl/lib/Tktable2.8
93 scons TCL=~/activetcl
94
95 See also the TCL_LIB and TK_LIB flags (scons -Qh).
96
97 ------
98 INSTALLING ON LINUX
99
100 To then install ASCEND, you will need to have write access to the
101 directories INSTALL_* as specified in your SCons configuration.
102 You can then type:
103
104 scons install
105
106 The simplest way to install ASCEND 'off-root' is something like:
107
108 scons INSTALL_PREFIX=~/ascroot
109
110 Note that if you install (or run) ASCEND off-root, you need to
111 ensure that Linux can access the shared libraries. For example,
112 in the above case, you would need to add
113
114 export LD_LIBRARY_PATH=$LD_LIBRARY_PATH:~/ascroot/lib
115
116 ------
117 INSTALLING ON WINDOWS
118
119 To build a Windows installer (a 'setup.exe') for the PyGTK GUI,
120 you will need to have the NSIS installer-creator installed on
121 your system (which is free, at http://nsis.sf.net/). Then you
122 should simply need to type
123
124 scons installer
125
126 This will leave an installer package named 'ascend-NNNNN.exe'
127 in the pygtk/interface directory, with NNNNN being the version number specified
128 at the top of the SConstruct file.
129
130 ------
131 A NOTE ABOUT PREFERENCES
132
133 ASCEND PyGTK GUI stores your preferences in the file ~/.ascend.ini.
134 The Tcl/Tk GUI creates a file under ~/ascdata.
135 You may wish to check these files if ASCEND seems to be doing
136 something you didn't expect.
137
138 ------
139 CREATING AN RPM/DEB PACKAGE
140
141 Many users prefer to keep their systems clear of unpackaged
142 software. For this reason, we aim to provide the ability to build
143 ASCEND as an RPM package. There is a "SPEC" file included in the
144 source tree. If you have a source package, such as for example
145 ascend-NNNNN.tar.bz2, place it in your home directory, then
146 type the following
147
148 rpmbuild -ta ascend-NNNNN.tar.bz2
149
150 This will pull out the 'spec' from from the source package,
151 which hopefully will be up to date in correspondance with the
152 package version number NNNNN.
153
154 You will then be able to install ASCEND using something like
155
156 rpm -i ~/rpm/ascend-NNNNN-0.jdpipe.i386.rpm
157
158 Debian/Unbuntu users should find that they can create a usable
159 .deb package using the tool 'alien'. We haven't got native
160 support for the generation of .deb packages at this stage.
161
162 NOTE: occasionally the 'ascend.spec' file may need to be updated
163 if changes have been made to the 'ascend.spec.in' file. Check
164 the implementation details in the SConstruct file.
165
166 ------
167 GETTING SUPPORT AND FURTHER INFORMATION
168
169 For support with ASCEND, details of mailing lists and other
170 useful information, please visit
171
172 ASCEND user's website:
173 http://ascend.cheme.cmu.edu/
174
175 ASCEND developer's wiki:
176 https://ascendserver.cheme.cmu.edu/wiki/
177

john.pye@anu.edu.au
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