/[ascend]/trunk/INSTALL.txt
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Contents of /trunk/INSTALL.txt

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Thu Jul 13 06:15:20 2006 UTC (18 years, 2 months ago) by johnpye
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Some small updates to the INSTALL.txt information.
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://pse.cheme.cmu.edu/wiki/view/Ascend/WebHome
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://pse.cheme.cmu.edu/svn-view/ascend/code/trunk/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 https://pse.cheme.cmu.edu/wiki/view/Ascend/BuildingAscend
49
50 For specific information on building the Python interface and
51 setting up the PyGTK GUI, please see
52 https://pse.cheme.cmu.edu/wiki/view/Ascend/PythonWrapper
53
54 ------
55 RUNNING FOR THE FIRST TIME
56
57 If you've build ASCEND from source, you don't need to 'install'
58 it before you can run it. The main issue with running from the
59 source directories is that you need to set various environment
60 variables:
61
62 ASCENDLIBRARY
63 Location of the 'models' directory, eg ~/src/ascend-NNN/models
64
65 LD_LIBRARY_PATH
66 Must contain the paths to the ascend shared libraries, in
67 particular libascend.so, or for the Tcl/Tk interface, also
68 libascendtcl.so.
69
70 It can often be easier to simply install in your home directory
71 as shown below.
72
73 ------
74 ISSUES WITH THE TCL/TK INTERFACE
75
76 It can sometimes be a bit challenging to build the Tcl/Tk
77 interface. ASCEND can run with Tcl/Tk version 8.4 but it is more stable when
78 using Tcl/Tk version 8.3.
79
80 A suggested approach in this case is to download and install the 'ActiveTcl'
81 distribution, version 8.3.5, and to install it in ~/activetcl.
82 http://downloads.activestate.com/ActiveTcl/Windows/8.3.5/
83
84 Then, you should be able to build the Tcl/Tk interface as shown:
85
86 export LD_LIBRARY_PATH=~/activetcl/lib:~/activetcl/lib/Tktable2.8
87 scons TCL=~/activetcl
88
89 See also the TCL_LIB and TK_LIB flags (scons -Qh).
90
91 ------
92 INSTALLING ON LINUX
93
94 To then install ASCEND, you will need to have write access to the
95 directories INSTALL_* as specified in your SCons configuration.
96 You can then type:
97
98 scons install
99
100 The simplest way to install ASCEND 'off-root' is something like:
101
102 scons INSTALL_PREFIX=~/ascroot
103
104 Note that if you install (or run) ASCEND off-root, you need to
105 ensure that Linux can access the shared libraries. For example,
106 in the above case, you would need to add
107
108 export LD_LIBRARY_PATH=$LD_LIBRARY_PATH:~/ascroot/lib
109
110 ------
111 INSTALLING ON WINDOWS
112
113 To build a Windows installer (a 'setup.exe') for the PyGTK GUI,
114 you will need to have the NSIS installer-creator installed on
115 your system (which is free, at http://nsis.sf.net/). Then you
116 should simply need to type
117
118 scons installer
119
120 This will leave an installer package named 'ascend-NNNNN.exe'
121 in the pygtk/interface directory, with NNNNN being the version number specified
122 at the top of the SConstruct file.
123
124 ------
125 A NOTE ABOUT PREFERENCES
126
127 ASCEND PyGTK GUI stores your preferences in the file ~/.ascend.ini.
128 The Tcl/Tk GUI creates a file under ~/ascdata.
129 You may wish to check these files if ASCEND seems to be doing
130 something you didn't expect.
131
132 ------
133 CREATING AN RPM/DEB PACKAGE
134
135 Many users prefer to keep their systems clear of unpackaged
136 software. For this reason, we aim to provide the ability to build
137 ASCEND as an RPM package. There is a "SPEC" file included in the
138 source tree. If you have a source package, such as for example
139 ascend-NNNNN.tar.bz2, place it in your home directory, then
140 type the following
141
142 rpmbuild -ta ascend-NNNNN.tar.bz2
143
144 This will pull out the 'spec' from from the source package,
145 which hopefully will be up to date in correspondance with the
146 package version number NNNNN.
147
148 You will then be able to install ASCEND using something like
149
150 rpm -i ~/rpm/ascend-NNNNN-0.jdpipe.i386.rpm
151
152 Debian/Unbuntu users should find that they can create a usable
153 .deb package using the tool 'alien'. We haven't got native
154 support for the generation of .deb packages at this stage.
155
156 NOTE: occasionally the 'ascend.spec' file may need to be updated
157 if changes have been made to the 'ascend.spec.in' file. Check
158 the implementation details in the SConstruct file.
159
160 ------
161 GETTING SUPPORT AND FURTHER INFORMATION
162
163 For support with ASCEND, details of mailing lists and other
164 useful information, please visit
165
166 ASCEND user's website:
167 http://ascend.cheme.cmu.edu/
168
169 ASCEND developer's wiki:
170 https://pse.cheme.cmu.edu/wiki/view/Ascend/WebHome

john.pye@anu.edu.au
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