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://pse.cheme.cmu.edu/wiki/view/Ascend/WebHome

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://pse.cheme.cmu.edu/svn-view/ascend/code/trunk/INSTALL?view=log

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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. Their fans
will also find build tools for jam and autotools. The autotools
build is still maintained for at least 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.

Using SCons 0.96.91 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'.

Then to build ASCEND, type

    scons

SCons will tell you what version(s) of ASCEND it is able to build.
The PyGTK interface requires Python (which is 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, please check
https://pse.cheme.cmu.edu/wiki/view/Ascend/BuildingAscend

For specific information on building the Python interface and
setting up the PyGTK GUI, please see
https://pse.cheme.cmu.edu/wiki/view/Ascend/PythonWrapper

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INSTALLING ON LINUX

To then install ASCEND, you will need to have write access to the 
directories INSTALL_DATA, INSTALL_BIN as specified in your
SCons configuration. You can then type

    scons install

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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 WITH_INSTALLER=1

This will leave an installer package named 'ascend-setup.exe'
in the pygtk/interface directory.

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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 includes 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.

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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://pse.cheme.cmu.edu/wiki/view/Ascend/WebHome