From LSST Wiki Table of Contents

Table of Contents

  1. Installing the LSST Build System and Software Stack
    1. Build System Status
  2. Getting Started
    1. Prerequisites
    2. Installing the Stack
  3. References

Installing the LSST Build System and Software Stack

The LSST build system is a collection of tools that allow one to automatically build and install the entire LSST Software Stack necessary to run pipelines and do development. The stack is made up of a number of packages, including both third-party packages (e.g. python, swig, cfitsio, etc.) and LSST packages (packages developed by the project, specifically for LSST). A server at dev.lsstcorp.org provides downloadable versions of "official" releases of these packages, which we call distributions. The distribution mechanism is similar in spirit to RPM or Debian distribution packages, but with some notable differences from the way we usually see those systems:

  • The distributions are usually in source form which are then automatically built on your local platform.
  • They are not installed as root and are not installed under /usr; rather, they are installed by a regular user into a single directory tree. If you wish, you can remove (with rm) or replace the entire tree at anytime.
  • Multiple versions of packages may coexist in the software stack at one time. The EUPS tools allow you to switch between different versions flexibly.

Below are pointers to instructions for installing an initial stack on your system. Because we build from source, installation takes a while; a full stack takes about an hour or more, depending on your system. Once you have at least a minimal stack in place, you can use the lsstpkg tool (a wrapper around eups distrib from the EUPS toolset) to install new packages or new versions of packages.

An alternate approach to building a local version of the LSST software stack on your native system, is to download a virtual image of the developent stack. Refer to Development on Virtual Machines for details.

Build System Status

The BuildSystemStatus page tracks the current status of the build system, including a summary of what packages are available and what problems are known.

Getting Started

Prerequisites

Before you start installing packages, you should make sure your system has the necessary prerequisites installed (using you OS's native package manager--e.g. yum, apt-get, etc.). Please note that at this time only the following platforms/OSes are "officially" supported; by that we mean that we conduct regular testing on these platforms and actively try to address problems as they come up.

"Officially" Supported Platforms (as of 9/2008):

  • Linux, Red Hat 5.0 or later
  • Linux, CentOS 5, or later

We hope to soon officially support one or more of the following:

  • MacOS 10.4
  • Fedora ??
  • Ubuntu 7, 8

We also try to collect information about running on other platforms. This information can be found via the platform-specific documents listed below.

Please see one of the following pages for details on how to ensure your system has the necessary OS-installed packages:

Installing the Stack

The document,  Getting Started, gives detailed instructions for creating and installing your own software stack. It also contains "survival guide" information for using svn and eups.

References