CIAO

Astronomical software available from ​http://asc.harvard.edu/ciao/

version ​3.3 has just been released.

dkg has done ​a bit of research into the licensing, which appears to be mostly free. However, there appear to be some external dependencies that may be more complicated. from ​the 3.3 README:

To build the software you do not need the binary distribution, however
you will need the other three distributions (aux+data, ots, and source).
If you have installed the binary distribution, you should remove the smaller 
ots subtree that was included within it, though if you forget to do this first 
don't worry -- it's not fatal, but tar may complain or give minor permission 
warnings when overlaying the new, larger OTS onto the previous subtree.
You must download/unpack the source, auxiliary, and OTS CXC distributions
(cxc_src.tar, cxc_aux.tar, and cxc_ots_<arch>.tar respectively) into the
same directory, following the same general instructions as given in (II). 

Due to licensing agreements we are unable to distribute the sources for the 
sm library.  The sm libraries in binary form can be downloaded separately if 
you are rebuilding from the source.  We are also unable to distribute the 
FFTW library.  Users who can comply with the GNU General Public License can 
download FFTW from http://www.fftw.org.  Finally, we cannot distribute parts
of the Sherpa Optimization source and pre-compiled libraries.  Due to this 
restriction users will be unable to recompile the sherpa application, and 
the mkrmf, vtpdetect, and dmfilth tools.

the biggest concern appears to be library versioning. (also from the readme):

Q) I cannot run application XYZ in a window setup for CIAO.
A) This is likely due to the fact you other application requires a
slightly different version of libstdc++.so.5. Until recently the gcc
c++ standard libraries have been in flux and are NOT cross
compatible. CIAO was built using gcc 3.2.1 and we require that exact
version of the library to be available. At this time we do not have a
work-around for this issue. 

libstdc++5 is undergoing a lot of changes anyway, so ideally, we will be able to build it ourselves with an up-to-date toolchain.

Installation

(1) Created the ciao root directory in /usr/local/ciao3.3:

root@metis:/usr/local/# sudo mkdir ciao3.3

(2) Expanded/uncompressed the distributions:

        root@metis:/usr/local/ciao3.3/CALDB# tar -xvf caldb_3.2.1_main.tar
        root@metis:/usr/local/ciao3.3/CALDB# rm caldb_3.2.1_main.tar
        root@metis:/usr/local/ciao3.3/CALDB# tar xvf acis_bkgrnd_3.0.0.tar
        root@metis:/usr/local/ciao3.3/CALDB# rm acis_bkgrnd_3.0.0.tar
        root@metis:/usr/local/ciao3.3/CALDB# tar xvf acis_psflib_2.9.tar
        root@metis:/usr/local/ciao3.3/CALDB# tar xvf hrc_psflib_2.0.tar
        root@metis:/usr/local/ciao3.3/ATOMDB# tar xvf atomdb.tar.tar 
        root@metis:/usr/local/ciao3.3/ATOMDB# tar xvf cxc_bin_linux8.tar
        root@metis:/usr/local/ciao3.3/ATOMDB# tar xvf cxc_aux.tar

(3) Ran the GNU configuration script:

root@metis:/usr/local/ciao3.3# ./configure --with-gz
creating cache ./config.cache
Running CXC configure, v3.1.2
checking host system type... i686-pc-linux-gnu
checking target system type... i686-pc-linux-gnu
checking build system type... i686-pc-linux-gnu
linux-gnu
ccinc = /usr/include
checking for more... /bin/more
checking for main in -lpthread... yes
configure: warning:   --with-imagerdir not specified, defaulting to /usr/local/ciao3.3/ots/saord
checking for wget... yes
updating cache ./config.cache
creating ./config.status
creating config/system/CXCdefaults
creating share/slsh/local-packages/varmmio.sl
creating bin/ciao.sh
creating bin/ciao.csh
creating bin/ciao.ksh
creating bin/ciao.bash
creating lib/sm/sm.cxcds
creating lib/sm/graphcap.local
creating config.h
config.h is unchanged
root@metis:/usr/local/ciao3.3#

(4) Create links to the Calibration and atomic data.


root@metis:/usr/local/ciao3.3# ln -s /usr/local/ciao3.3/CALDB CALDB
root@metis:/usr/local/ciao3.3# ln -s /usr/local/ciao3.3/ATOMDB ATOMDB

root@metis:/usr/local/ciao3.3#

(5) Tested configuration script:

root@metis:/usr/local/ciao3.3# cd bin
root@metis:/usr/local/ciao3.3/bin# ls
root@metis:/usr/local/ciao3.3/bin# source ciao.bash
CIAO configuration is complete...
 CIAO version     :  CIAO 3.3 Wednesday, November 16, 2005
 Proposal Toolkit version :  Cycle 8 Wednesday, November 16, 2005
 bin dir          :  /usr/local/ciao3.3/bin
root@metis:/usr/local/ciao3.3/bin#

(6) Added alias to .bashrc for ciao startup:

### CIAO Environment ###
alias ciao=". /usr/local/ciao3.3/bin/ciao.bash"

Review install/startup notes. Find test scripts.

We recommend that you start FTOOLS before CIAO; this is necessary for version 4.x of FTOOLS and ensures 
that the online help facility of the CIAO tools will work when using version 5.x of FTOOLS.