Comment on BuildInstructions in casacore

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Comment by Anderson271828:

Hello. I am currently trying to run through the tests. At the moment
the system is complaining that it cannot find the IGRF stuff:

Requested data table IGRF cannot be found in the searched directories:
./
./data/
/homes/anderson/aips++/data/ephemerides/
/.aux_mnt/vlb054a/anderson/external_code/casacore-0.3.0/stage/data/ephemerides/
/homes/anderson/aips++/data/geodetic/
/.aux_mnt/vlb054a/anderson/external_code/casacore-0.3.0/stage/data/geodetic/
/homes/anderson/aips++/data/aips/Measures/
/.aux_mnt/vlb054a/anderson/external_code/casacore-0.3.0/stage/data/aips/Measures/
/homes/anderson/aips++/code/trial/apps/measures/
/.aux_mnt/vlb054a/anderson/external_code/casacore-0.3.0/stage/code/trial/apps/measures/

This leads me to two questions: Why is the measures stuff looking in
.../casacore-0.3.0/stage/data/geodetic/ when the build instructions
tell me to install the asap_data.tar.bz2 file into the casacore
directory, and not the stage directory? I have a
.../casacore-0.3.0/data/geodetic/IGRF directory with files in it...

Second, upon looking through the source code to track this down, it
looks like casacore is expecting some environment variables to be set
(AIPSPATH and CASARCFILES, I already have a HOME), but there are no
instructions on the Google BuildInstructions page. Would anyone like
to point out the magic incantations to make in my .bashrc file?

For more information:
http://code.google.com/p/casacore/wiki/BuildInstructions

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Comment by Anderson271828:

Hello again,

Here are a few more comments for building casacore:

batchbuild.py does not deal well with passing arguments to scons which
have multiple parts. For instance, if I set extracppflags="-Idir1
-Idir2" because my SuSE system is stupid and I needed to install
several things in different places, scons gets messed up because it
only sees extracppflags=-Idir1 as one argument, and -Idir2 is something
else. So, I kludged this by changing line 49 of batchbuild.py to read

command += " \"" + arg + "\""

so that it would keep the entire argument together. Of course, if
someone needs to put a " in the argument, then this would not work.

Next, the FORTRAN library needs to be specified as f2clib, not fc2lib
as said above.

Also, it would be good to point out to those of us not familiar with
scons how to tell it to use multiple libraries for things. It took me
a while to figure out that I needed to say blaslib=cblas,f77blas,atlas
with no spaces and no Python brackets to make a list. (And at the
moment, some parts of the build are still complaining that they do not
find cblas and f77blas, while other parts of the build can see them.)

Finally for now, casa/casa/Arrays/test/tArrayIter.cc needs to have an
#include <casa/Arrays/ArrayIO.h> line.

Have a good evening or morning or whatever it may be.

James M Anderson

[codesite...@google.com]

Comment by Malte.Marquarding:

thanks for the feedback.

please find the comments inline.

{{{

batchbuild.py does not deal well with passing arguments to scons which
have multiple parts. For instance, if I set extracppflags="-Idir1
-Idir2" because my SuSE system is stupid and I needed to install
several things in different places, scons gets messed up because it
only sees extracppflags=-Idir1 as one argument, and -Idir2 is something
else. So, I kludged this by changing line 49 of batchbuild.py to read

command += " \"" + arg + "\""
}}}

Does - similar to scons - extracppflags=-ldir1,-ldir2 work?

In fact, this really should be (not yet implemented)

extracpppath=dir1,dir2

I will add two more options

extracpppath and extralibpath

{{{

so that it would keep the entire argument together. Of course, if
someone needs to put a " in the argument, then this would not work.
}}}

For that reason I think I will leave this and try to be more explicit
about how to specify "multiple options"
{{{

Next, the FORTRAN library needs to be specified as f2clib, not fc2lib
as said above.
}}}

This seems to be a typo.

{{{

Also, it would be good to point out to those of us not familiar with
scons how to tell it to use multiple libraries for things. It took me
a while to figure out that I needed to say blaslib=cblas,f77blas,atlas
with no spaces and no Python brackets to make a list.
}}}

Why should there be python brackets?
Anyway I will put some example build lines into the wiki instructions.
{{{

(And at the
moment, some parts of the build are still complaining that they do not
find cblas and f77blas, while other parts of the build can see them.)
}}}

Could you please specify details? which parts generate errors. Also,
please always specify compiler (version) and scons version.
{{{

Finally for now, casa/casa/Arrays/test/tArrayIter.cc needs to have an
#include <casa/Arrays/ArrayIO.h> line.
}}}

Could you file an "issue" attaching compiler version as I haven't seen
this one before.

Cheers,
Malte.