Scisoft

Abstract

Scisoft is a project within ESO to provide a collection of astronomical software utilities in a uniform way at all four ESO sites and to make them available to the outside world.

Scisoft includes IRAF, MIDAS, DS9, Sextractor and many more packages. Look at the list of contens of its ESO pages.

Prerequisites

If there is no /scisoft directory on your computer, please ask the Admins for assistance.

Unfortunately some application may not run on the latest Linux distros. You can use the server Perseus instead of your Linux desktop if you run into problems.

Using the ESO Scientific Software Collection (Scisoft)

If the Scisoft software collection has been installed on your computer, or an accessible server machine it is essential for all users to source a shell script to configure their environment. What needs to be done depends on the user's shell. If you are unsure which shell you are using type:

 

Code: echo $SHELL

 

"bash" users should invoke the command:

 

Code: source /scisoft/bin/Setup.bash

 

"tcsh" users should invoke the command:

 

Code: source /scisoft/bin/Setup.csh

 

Do not put it in your .bashrc or .cshrc because there are side-effects which can cause malfunctions for other programs. You may point to other versions of software than those installed in the Linux distribution (e.g. pgplot).

Once the setup script has been sourced all the Scisoft packages will be available without further action. So, for example you can start PyRAF by just typing "pyraf".

Hint

You do not like to type this long statement all the time you need it ? Set up a short alias "dosci" in your .bashrc

 

Code: alias dosci=". /scisoft/bin/Setup.bash" or .csh

 

or .cshrc

 

Code: alias dosci source /scisoft/bin/Setup.bashrc