Installing WCSTools as an IRAF Package

To install WCSTools as a package in your local IRAF system, take the following steps:
  1. The package is distributed as a compressed tar archive which may be obtained by anonymous ftp or http.
    The .install file includes these installation directions.

    To obtain the package from our web server,
    click here for wcstools-3.9.1.iraf.tar.gz
    click here for wcstools-3.9.1.iraf.install [Install in archive file]
    click here for wcstools-3.9.1.iraf.readme [Readme in archive file]

    To obtain the package via ftp click here or (assuming a UNIX computer), type the following commands:
    	    % ftp cfa-ftp.harvard.edu
    	    login: anonymous
    	    password: [your user name]
    	    ftp> cd pub/iraf
    	    ftp> get wcstools-3.9.1.iraf.install
    	    ftp> get wcstools-3.9.1.iraf.readme
    	    ftp> binary
    	    ftp> get wcstools-3.9.1.iraf.tar.gz
    	    ftp> quit
    	    % ls -l
    	    -rw-r--r--  1 mink          xxxx xxx xx xx:xx wcstools-3.9.1.iraf.install
    	    -rw-r--r--  1 mink          xxxx xxx xx xx:xx wcstools-3.9.1.iraf.readme
    	    -rw-r--r--  1 mink        xxxxxx xxx xx xx:xx wcstools-3.9.1.iraf.tar.gz
    

  2. Create a directory to contain the WCSTools external package files. This directory may be outside the IRAF directory tree and must be readable by anyone who will need to use it in IRAF. In the following examples, this root directory is named /local/wcstools/. Make the appropriate file name substitutions for your site.

  3. If you are making this part of your local IRAF installation, log in as IRAF and edit the extern.pkg file in the iraf$unix/hlib directory to define the package to the CL. From the IRAF account, outside the CL, you can move to this directory with the command:
                % cd $hlib
    
    Define the environment variable wcstools to be the pathname to the wcstools root directory. UNIX pathnames must be terminated with a '/'.
                reset wcstools	= /wcstools/
                task  wcstools.pkg	= wcstools$wcstools.cl
    
    Near the end of the hlib$extern.pkg file, update the definition of helpdb so it includes the rvsao help database, copying the syntax already used in the string. Add this line before the line containing a closing quote:
     
    	    ,wcstools$lib/helpdb.mip\
    
  4. Add to hlib$clpackage.men the package description:
     
                wcstools - Utilities to manipulate FITS and IRAF image WCS
    
  5. If you are setting up WCSTools up for your personal use as a user package, Add the following to your login.cshrc:
                reset wcstools	= /wcstools/
                task  wcstools.pkg	= wcstools$wcstools.cl
    
  6. Unpack the tar file into the WCSTOOLS root directory. On a UNIX system, where ftpdir is the pathname of the directory into which the package was ftp'ed and irafpkg is the directory below which you wish to install wcstools
    	    % cd $irafpkg
    	    % zcat $ftpdir/wcstools-3.9.1.iraf.tar.gz | tar xvf -
    	     (or maybe gzcat on a non-Linux system)
                % ln -s wcstools-3.9.1 wcstools
    
    The archive file can be deleted once the package has been successfully installed.

  7. If you already have WCSTools installed somewhere else on your system, simply cd to the new wcstools directory and
    	    rm bin.[arch]
    	    ln -s  bin.[arch]
    
    for example
    	    ln -s /usr/local/bin bin.linux
    
    Type "cl" or "ecl" to log in to IRAF and skip to step 10.

    If you don't already have WCSTools installed on your system, continue.

  8. Type "cl" or "ecl" to log in to IRAF, cd wcstools to get to the wcstools package directory.

  9. To put compiled executables in the appropriate binary directory, type
    	    ecl> mkpkg 
    
    for the architecture of the computer you are using.
    For 64-bin Linux, for example,
    	    ecl> mkpkg linux64
    
    or Red Hat Linux
    	    ecl> mkpkg redhat [mkpkg linux in 2.15.1 and later]
    
  10. Make the package by typing
    	    ecl> mkpkg update
    
    If you want to support multiple architectures from the same IRAF, type
    	    ecl> mkpkg clean
    	    ecl> mkpkg 
    	    ecl> mkpkg update
    
    Report any compilation errors to Jessica Mink.

  11. Type
    	    ecl> wcstools
    
    to load the package.

  12. Type
    	    ecl> help wcstools
    
    to list all of the tasks available with brief descriptions. Some names have been modified to avoid clashes with commonly used IRAF tasks, such as dhead for delhead and chead for cphead.

  13. Help files only exist for some of the tasks. Typing a WCSTools task name with no arguments almost always generates a list of possible command line arguments with their descriptions. The task name followed by "help" *always* lists the options, and the task name followed by "version" lists the version number and date.

    Usually-up-to-date hypertext help is available on the World Wide Web at http://tdc-www.harvard.edu/software/wcstools

    Email Jessica Mink if you have any further questions.

Updated 27 March 2015